Just One Wild & Precious Life
by NorahB
Summary: Damon. Elena. Human. 2040. A houseful of kids and everything oh so normal(ish)-but the supernatural is always itching to come back into their lives. Especially when most of their kids are witches and Damon still misses being more than human. (He does take the little ones to story time though.) Post-series. This is a short sequel to my book-length completed fic, "The New Normal."
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:**

_**Obviously, I own no part of The Vampire Diaries. If I did, there would be no Silas, no Travelers, and the whole Sirens/Cade plot would make a whole lot more sense. Regardless of any plot holes or slumps in later seasons, I thank Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson, from the bottom of my heart, for creating such a kick-ass show based (oh so loosely) on L. J. Smith's original book series. No way could I have done this story better than Julie and Kevin, and I'm loving the chance to add my own twist to their TVD universe.** _

**Summary:**

__(Post-series. Expect spoilers.) __

_Damon. Elena. Human. 2040. Six kids. Lots of responsibilities. Seeing Klaus and Caroline's free and loose vampire life, they feel the many indignities of aging and being human.  
_

_This story is a short sequel to my very long, completed fic "The New Normal," which picked up shortly after the series finale. This new story is set about 20 years after that story ended (and six years after my epilogue). It's just me having fun, showing a glimpse into Damon and Elena's future and their family life. At most, this sequel will be three or four chapters._

_**A/N**_

_This chapter is un-betaed. As this is a sequel to a book-length work, I'd suggest that you read "The New Normal" first. I think this story will generally make sense without reading the first, but you're probably best to start at the beginning._

_Cheers,_

_Norah_

**August 2040**

**Williamsburg, Virginia**

"Why does it always have to be the freaking third floor?" Damon grumbled as he lugged one of his son's boxes up the second flight of stairs of this godforsaken brick building. When they reached the landing, he had to put the damned thing down and mop his forehead. Caroline laughed behind him, sounding free and unencumbered and of course not panting. His box landed with a thud. He was sweating like a pig, and he really wanted to blame this excess of perspiration on the excess of humidity in a Virginian August. Why did kids have to move into college during the hottest month of the year? And why, oh why, did humans have to sweat? Yes, the weather was a culprit here, a large part of why this particular climb was difficult. Add to that the mere fact that Damon Salvatore was a human being. But his other, more embarrassing problem was that he didn't have the same body he'd had all those years ago, when he'd been cured of vampirism and began this human 2.0 life. He was almost twice as old, biologically at least. A couple months ago he'd had to cut out his morning jogs, because he'd twisted his knee. The knee he'd banged up in a freaking Civil War battle, which had been an annoyance over the past decade but was now a persistent problem. Flaring up and swelling up all the time. Causing his doctor to frown and lecture him about taking care of his apparently pathetic body. Two years shy of fifty (if you counted biologically) and 201 years old (if you counted from his actual birth date), he was still trim and sexy, still got plenty of looks from the ladies, and a number of gentlemen. He wasn't a lost cause, but climbing these stairs felt like torture.

Also, his head ached like a witch had used juju powers to light him up. Last night had been a glorious gift of hedonism, the kind of night he almost never got anymore, what with all those pesky kids and pesky responsibilities. But the hangover and lack of sleep was freaking killing him. He blamed Elena for not coming along on this particular adventure—making him help Gil, their third child, move into his freshman dorm without proper supervision. He and his wife had been all "divide and conquer" this year. Ric was watching the three youngest kids back home. Joey was in Vegas with his boyfriend, having promised to get to Columbia in time for classes to start, and no doubt getting into his fair share of trouble, because Damon had okayed the trip before Elena could say no. And because Joey, unlike his older sister, didn't need hand holding before the semester began.

Elena had taken their oldest child to New York while Damon handled Gil's freshman dorm crap. Summer had actually graduated in May, but she was still in the student mindset, and wanted Elena's help moving into her new studio apartment/closet, and getting set up for the internship she'd landed right after graduating from Columbia. An internship that would, according to his most angsty child, make or break her entire future. Talk about melodrama. It was almost like she was a freaking vampire instead of a witch.

If Elena had been here in Williamsburg with Damon last night, he would have been in bed with his wife by nine, watching Netflix, and asleep by eleven, not out clubbing until four in the morning. Elena was a reasonable person.

Damon's "help" on this college move-in trip was one Caroline Forbes-Salvatore. Who had brought Klaus along, because apparently Klaus had nothing better to do, and thought it was amusing. Caroline had taken one look at him when she'd arrived at their house in Mystic Falls two nights ago and said, "No, no, no. You've gone _too_ native. There's the sexy dad look. And then there's that." She'd proceeded to raid his closet, made him change out of the ratty sandals, comfortable jeans, and the polo shirt he had to agree was embarrassing, into his most expensive casual shoes, tight jeans that he knew looked good even if they were not as comfy, and a black t-shirt that had cost a hundred dollars and which Caroline had pronounced, "classic Damon Salvatore."

And she'd decided he needed an intervention to reclaim his true self. She'd gotten her twins to hang out with Gil last so Damon could go clubbing with Klaus and Caroline in some dive in Virginia Beach. So he could act like he was twenty-five again. Or undead. Either one would fit here, really. And it was awesome. Damon hadn't been dancing in at least three years, and he'd reveled in the hedonism of the night. But keeping up with vampires was exhausting. Caroline and Klaus could drink all night and not get drunk, could stay up all night and not feel any consequences. The club should have closed at two, but Klaus had managed to compel the manager into staying open all night. Damon's ego, and his desperate need to break out of dad-and-husband-and-responsible-adult-mode, had prevented him from listening to the Elena-voice-of-reason in his head, telling him to call it a night at one, or two at the latest. To drink only a couple rounds of bourbon with several glasses of water, no ice, in between. Instead, like a child, he'd tried to keep up with Klaus Michaelson. At drinking.

So they hadn't gotten the early start they'd promised Gil. And this afternoon, on these stupid steps, Damon was out of shape, out of breath, hungover, and going on four hours of not-great-quality sleep. "Do you have an aspirin?" he asked Caroline when he caught his breath.

She looked up from her phone, a quizzical expression on her beautiful and timelessly young face. Forever seventeen. She had her moving box casually tucked under one arm. The other was clutching her cell, the newest iPhone 30. She was hammering her text with the sort of precision that was very, very Caroline. Human or vampire, Caroline was always precise and always determined. Even about the smallest task. "Why would I have aspirin?" she asked.

Damon sighed. "Right. Vampire. No headaches." And now the fact that he'd asked a vampire for the aspirin in the first place seemed so ludicrous. He'd been human too long. Twenty-three years. These days, his vampire life felt distant enough that he no longer felt like a man out of time, or a vampire playing human. Most people he knew carried aspirin, because nowadays Damon didn't hang out with vampires on a regular basis.

"Hangover that bad?" Caroline asked, still typing her text message. Was she writing a novel?

"Worse," Damon said, mopping his brow with the old school handkerchief he kept in the back pocket of his jeans.

"Do you want me to run to the pharmacy?" she said, overly concerned as she turned on that very Caroline, mother hen thing. Like she couldn't help it.

"No!"

This was getting stupid. Resolving to reach Gil's damned dorm room before he'd dissolved into a puddle of water and salt, Damon crouched down, trying to manhandle the box. His back twinged. Damon groaned in pain, but he tried to be quiet about it. Which was kind of stupid because he was standing next to a vampire: she was going to hear any sound regardless of how loud or soft it was. Damon shut his eyes briefly, took a deep breath, and changed his stance. Lifting with his legs instead of his back. He got the box up with minimal embarrassing sounds.

"Jesus fucking Christ," he grunted as they began to climb the next flight of stairs. "Gil said these were books but I swear he packed it full of bricks just to fuck with me."

Caroline laughed as she walked behind him. And then she ran smack into him. Damon dropped the box on his foot and would have toppled down two flights of stairs if Caroline hadn't caught him with her arms of steel. So, the lesson here was that if you were going to have a friend dumb enough to walk into you when you were climbing the stairs while carrying a heavy box, you better make sure that said dumb friend was a vampire.

"FUCK!" Damon screamed. "I mean, seriously, Caroline, it's a box of fucking bricks, and now you're walking into me. Could you just, I don't know, maybe not do that?"

A middle aged-woman and a teenaged girl were approaching them, coming down the stairs. The girl was conservatively dressed in a collared shirt and khakis, and had that look about her, deer in the headlights sort of look, like she'd been sheltered from the whole damned world by helicopter parents.

The woman, presumably the mother, glared at Damon with a scandalized, uber self-righteous expression. "Excuse me, but could you watch your language?" she asked in the most prissy tone Damon had heard in at least three months. She was wearing a white pants suit. To move her daughter into a dorm? In August? In Southeastern Virginia?

"What?" Damon snapped.

"Damon, leave it," Caroline hissed.

Damon rolled his eyes. Ignoring the prissy mother, he said to Caroline, "Maybe if you could just walk up the stairs without shoving into me."

"Maybe if you could walk up the stairs at a normal pace, old man," Care said.

Damon glanced back and gave her his best eyebrow waggle. "Care Bear, I can still take you."

"You cannot."

"You can't even walk up the stairs without almost killing me," he said, laughing, as he continued his climb. Caroline followed at a safer distance.

A really annoying throat clearing, and Damon turned back to the prissy woman in white. "Is that really how you talk to your daughter?" she asked him. "You should be ashamed of yourself!"

Damon and Caroline broke out laughing, immediately. He was tempted to tell the bossy woman exactly who and what Caroline was. But he managed to overcome his darker instincts, saying, after his fit of giggles had passed, "Lady, she's not my daughter. We're just trying to move in my son, who's up in his dorm room. NOT HELPING ME CARRY HIS SHIT UP THE STAIRS." Damon bellowed the last bit up to the third floor, wondering if Gil a) could hear him, and b) why the hell wasn't he carrying his own shit up the stairs, and instead leaving it to his old man. Seriously?

The prissy woman said, "Language! I will not have you using that kind of language around children, no matter how you speak to your own, or to young girls who are helping you carry boxes."

Damon just rolled his eyes, but apparently Care had had enough of the woman's tongue because she said, "Ma'am, with all due respect, you don't own the dorm. You have no authority in this building, and it's neither your responsibility nor your place to police anyone's language. If you have a problem, take it up with the R.A., or the college administration."

Damon laughed, or tried to..

Just another half flight of stairs.

Half a flight, old man, you can do it.

"Well, I have never!"

"Mom!" said the woman's poor daughter, her voice so desperate Damon felt sorry for the kid and thought he might tell Gil to befriend her. She didn't seem like a bitch, which was an achievement considering the mother. The poor kid could probably use a friend, almost definitely had no idea how to socialize. Not with that mother. Damon knew that kind of kid, enough came through the Salvatore School. "Please don't do this," the girl begged.

"Are you going to the third floor?" Mother-from-Hell yelled.

"Obviously," Caroline said.

"I'm Mrs. O'Brien," the woman yelled up at them. "This is my daughter Chelsea. And if I find out that your child is a bad influence on her, Mr.—I didn't catch your name?"

"Mom!"

Damon had finally reached the third floor. Ignoring the incessant woman, he stared longingly down the hall. He could see the door to his son's room. Which held the promise of finally sitting down. His feet were killing him, and that old war injury was definitely flaring up. His knee only ached now, but he knew what was coming. He shouted, "Gil! Come get this freaking box, 'cause if I have to carry it another inch I think I might have a heart attack."

Caroline gasped as she ran up the last few steps and put her box down next to his. She grabbed his sweaty face, looking at him hard. "What are you talking about? What symptoms are you having? There's something about the left arm. Does your left arm hurt?" And now she was grabbing his left arm, like somehow touching it was going to give her information.

He pulled away from her. "I'm fine, Care, I promise. Figure of speech."

But she was tearing up. He pulled her into a tight hug. "I'm not going anywhere for a long time, okay?"

Caroline nodded. These last few years she'd started worrying way, way too much about her friends' health, overreacting to news that anyone had the flu or had busted up his knee, as if she was afraid they might drop dead at any moment. She'd always known she would outlive her childhood friends, but Elena and Bonnie's middle age seemed to be hitting her hard. Damon suspected that Caroline was also freaking out about the twins being adults who looked older than their mother. And the fact that her life was now distinctly a vampire life, diverging more and more from the lives of her old friends and her children.

It was really good to have Caroline here, her first visit Stateside in two years. He needed to tell her that. Even if Klaus had come along. And honestly, as long as Klaus wasn't eating anyone Damon cared about, or hatching diabolical plans, the Original was a hell of a lot of fun to party with. Hangover notwithstanding, last night had been awesome. Damon had loved every moment of stupidity and irresponsibility.

"Okay, okay, you're fine," Caroline said, pulling away and making a face. "And you're soaked. And now I'm soaked. How can you be sweating so much?"

"Humanity," he said. "It's a bitch."

Gil finally emerged from his room at the end of the hall. "Could you be any louder, Dad?" he asked. "I mean, seriously, everybody can hear you. It's embarrassing."

At seventeen Gil was skinny, with that gangly look of a kid not yet done growing, a kid whose adult body was still in limbo. Gil was all possibility. He was an inch or two taller than his dad. Damon was afraid that this kid might eventually dwarf him, unlike his older kids. Summer was about Elena's height, and Joey was exactly as tall as Damon. Gil had Damon's jet black hair, a bit of curl to it so that in certain light Damon could see hints of his Civil War-era self. But their third child had Elena's dark, deep eyes. Mild-mannered, with a sharp wit that could punch you in the gut if you provoked him, Gil was a bit like Stefan at that age. But not quite: the kid had more grit, less angst. He believed in himself in a way neither young Stefan nor young Damon had, was solid in a way that Damon's kid brother definitely hadn't been. Not even when he died at the ripe old age of 171. Maybe the difference was that Gilbert Lorenzo Salvatore didn't endure Damon and Stefan's shitty childhood. No mother sick in bed for years and then "dead." No abusive father. No evil vampire pretending to be a houseguest, and no townspeople rounding up vampires to "burn" them in a church.

Damon's boy was sweet, ridiculously smart, and much calmer than Joey and Summer. Much less trouble than those two, who had a habit of running off and then claiming that some witch (often Hope Mikaelson) had desperately needed their help solving some sort of terrifying magical crisis. Those two were a handful. Gil, on the other hand, had no magic and absolutely no interest in the supernatural. He didn't hate witches or vampires or anything like that. He just thought they were boring.

"I don't care if I'm embarrassing you," Damon snapped at the kid. "Take this box unless you want me to do something truly cringe-worthy. And then you can take a turn going down to the car, carry your own damned crap. And I'll have a nice little lie-down on your skinny-ass dorm bed."

Yes, he was grumpy, tired, hungover, sweaty, and old. But God, he adored this kid, even if he was currently glaring at him like Damn was an asshole. Oh well. Damon was an asshole. And he had a special place in his heart for this particular kid. He reached up and ruffled that hair, so much like his own.

Gil in college. Damn, this was weird. As he stood on the third floor of Monroe Hall, Damon was glad Caroline was here. He'd thought he just wanted a road trip buddy. But standing here, in front of his too-tall son, he was glad he wasn't alone, that the woman standing beside him understood how hard this milestone was to endure. Care knew how hard it was to watch your babies grow up—to have them not need you in the same way. Gil looked so old, standing there in cutoffs and a shirt advertising some band Damon had never heard of. He looked ... not like a kid anymore. Not quite an adult. But he looked like a person who didn't need Damon anymore, or at least not in the same way he had even a few months ago.

Something in Damon's chest caught. Taking Summer to college had been hard. And Joey one year later. But Gil. They were all leaving him. He didn't know what he'd do once their house, which only felt right when eight humans were sitting at the dining room table for family dinners, was home to only him and his wife. Beautiful as she was.

Before he'd turned, Damon had only wanted to Elena. He'd agreed to the-kids-thing because she wanted to be a mother so badly, and he wasn't anti-kid, but he didn't think he was father-material. Summer had been an accident. The fact that he fell in love with that first baby had been a shock, and a minor miracle. Joey had been another accident, though as soon as Damon had suspected Elena was pregnant again, he'd felt giddy.

This child, standing in front of him, was the first they'd actually planned for, tried for, and then actually got. When Gil was born, it was like Damon had crossed a threshold. He'd been human for six years, had crossed into his thirties (biologically), and had long since accepted his life as a family man. They'd moved back to Mystic Falls a couple years before, so Elena could start her residency as a general practitioner at Mystic Falls General, and they could rebuild the old Gilbert house. When Gil was born, they didn't live in married student housing, like when Summer and Joey were born, but in a real, grown-up house. They had three bathrooms, an actual nursery, and a laundry room so they could clean all those baby clothes stained with spit-up without lugging bags down to the laundromat. Damon had been a businessman for six years too, and he'd finally managed to get the new bar in Mystic Falls in the black. He was the primary caretaker too. Elena was run ragged with her residency back then, and he didn't have to work mornings.

He could've had the kids in daycare or preschool all day, or hired a nanny. In fact, they'd done that for a couple years. But when Summer had been about two, and started to talk up a storm, Damon had found himself wanting more time with the kids. And wanting to oversee their first experiences in the world. Alaric and Caroline had actually checked him over—to make sure he wasn't being compelled, or under a witch's spell—when Damon Salvatore of all people decided he was going to cut down on childcare hours so he could be a "stay at home dad" in the mornings. Take the kids to things like story time at the library. To be fair, they also stayed home some mornings and watched R-rated movies, because screw watching Disney or pretending like his kids were never going to see violence or sex.

Back when Joey was born, he'd still felt like an amateur. But when this particular, currently-glaring-at-him child was born, Damon had been a real dad. Every Tuesday, he'd strapped Gil to his chest in that baby carrier thing he'd once thought was so stupid, but by then thought was brilliant, loaded up his three and four year-olds into their red wagon, and walked to the local library for story time, promising them ice cream after if they behaved and didn't tattle on him to Mommy.

Shit. How was he going to leave this particular baby behind at college? Gil wasn't even old enough for college. He was too damned smart for his own good, had graduated a year early.

Gil shot a look of disdain at his father, but picked up the cardboard box. Damon was glad to see his son struggle with the box, like it was actually heavy even if you were young and fit. The kid almost dropped the box before managing to get it up waist-high, with a grunt. "Books," Gil said.

"I gathered."

"I still didn't get your name!" The prissy woman called up the stairs. Seriously? She was still there? Didn't she have something else to do with her time?

"Salvatore," he said as he followed Gil down the hall. He turned his head to look at the monstrous human for just a second, giving her his most dangerous smile. "My name is Damon Salvatore, I have no interest in your whining, moaning, and self-righteous morality, and I have more money than God, so you might as well just stop your idle threats. You can't hurt me."

The woman chase them up the stairs and was standing on the landing. "My daughter—"

He grabbed his son's arm and forced the boy to turn around. "Gil, meet Chelsea. Chelsea meet Gil. If my son corrupts your daughter, neither you nor I will be able to stop it. But he's a good kid, probably my easiest. So, lady, I'd just chill, and stop whatever it is you think you're doing."

Gil sighed. "Dad, could you just come help me get my room set up and then maybe you and Aunt Caroline can go do something else that doesn't involve pissing off everybody else's parents?"

Caroline raised her brows at Gil. "Respect, Gilbert. Show your father some respect. But point taken."

"Sure thing, kiddo," Damon said, flashing a smile at the kid. "I'm just screwing with her anyway. Has your roommate shown up yet?"

"Yeah, he did. You must have missed him when you got the last load from the car."

"Is he cool?"

"I don't know yet, but could you maybe cool it on the commentary? Just try to act like a normal dad?"

Damon laughed. "When am I not normal?"

Gil stopped and pulled up beside his dad. Whispering. "Like all the time. So maybe no jokes about vampires or being from the 1800s."

"But that's just true. And nobody believes it, so it's not going to get us in trouble. And it's hilarious."

"But it's not normal. You got me?"

Damon rolled his eyes. "You're no fun."

"I just want a normal college experience. N. O. R. M. A. L." Gil was the only one of their kids who'd never shown any magical ability. He seemed intent on setting himself apart from the rest of the family. If he couldn't be special because of supernatural gifts, he'd be special because he kicked ass on the SATs. He'd gone to the Salvatore School until third grade, because they kept assuming he would show powers like his older siblings had. But eventually Bonnie did some tests and ruled out the possibility of him being a witch. He'd started in the public schools Elena had attended, eventually ending up at Mystic Falls High.

Their fourth child, Lucia, transferred into public school with Gil a couple years later. She was a witch, but her powers were pretty mild, in her words "wussy." She just wasn't happy at a school where everybody else was more powerful and where she could never live up to her oldest siblings. Joey and Summer were so powerful it was scary: they were legends at the Salvatore School, along with Caroline and Ric's twins and of course Hope Mikaelson. Damon and Elena's twins, now eight, were also powerhouses. For whatever reason, serious magical mojo had skipped over his middle children. Gil and Lucia had always been tight, and Damon suspected that one reason she'd wanted to go to public school was to be with her brother.

"Normal," Damon said to his son. He felt for the kid. Damon didn't have any magical powers, and boy did he long for them. He was jealous of Joey and Summer too. He still missed vampiric compulsion and all the fun tricks that came along with being undead. "I tell you what, kid, I'll try, pinkie swear promise. But at the end of the day, you just come from a freaky-ass family, and sometimes, it's better to embrace the weird."

Though come to think of it, this so-called normal kid was going to be causing him a lot less stress during his freshman year than his less normal siblings. Gil would likely make it through the whole year without breaking any laws or setting anything on fire. He wouldn't have episodes of accidental magic, or unwittingly reveal his abilities to fellow students. Damon's old friend Tommy Fell, who he'd turned back in the 1860s, had made several trips to New York over the last four years, to compel a whole host of people to forget things Summer and Joey had done.

Gil led Damon and Caroline to his new dorm room at the end of the hall, unceremoniously dumping the box next to a spartan looking bed, still without sheets or a pillow or anything. The bed looked like it belonged in a prison. This was the first room, other than his nursery, that Gil wouldn't share with Joey. Every time Damon saw one of his kids' dorm rooms, he remembered his luxurious suite of rooms at the University of Virginia in 1855, and marveled at how the standards had declined for a man getting a gentleman's education.

But now, suddenly, he remembered Elena's dorm room at Whitmore. The one she'd shared with Caroline and that girl who got killed by a vampire, Enzo if memory served, and then with Caroline and Bonnie, after Bon Bon had come back from the dead. That room had been huge and fancy. A palace compared to Gil's little hellhole.

"Care Bear," he said, turning to the blond vampire. "Why was your room at Whitmore so much nicer than this one?"

She grinned. "Oh, that was compulsion. I had that room specially done up, just for us, got builders in, knocked down some walls. It was a three rooms combined. I even got us a fireplace. None of the other dorm rooms looked like ours."

Gil was standing there, staring open-mouthed at Caroline. "Could you do that for me, Auntie Care?"

Caroline raised her brows. "Oh, I'm sorry, weren't you just going on about how you just wanted 'normal'? Surely normal doesn't include anything vampire-related?" Caroline had begun to take issue with this whole "normal" thing and had been griping about Gil's use of the n-word all day yesterday.

"Well, I'm not saying everything has to be normal." The kid started trying to maneuver himself into the land of special. Aka, the land of people who got special treatment.

"Gil, I'm not compelling you a super-special dorm room," Caroline said. "But if you stop being a pill, and maybe start being nice to your dad. ... I mean, he is here and he is making a serious effort to be kind to you. When I started college, my dad was dead. And a couple years before that, he tortured me to try to get me to stop wanting blood. So, I don't know, maybe you start appreciating how awesome your mom and dad are, even if they're not, if none of us are exactly normal. And I might compel you something else."

Gil gulped and looked suitably shamed. Caroline had that effect on people. "I'm sorry, Auntie Care. Please don't throw me out a window."

She laughed. And softened. Gil had that effect on people. "How about a mini-fridge? There was a really rude, totally spoiled kid downstairs, and I happened to peek in his room. Because your dad was taking forever to catch up to me with that suitcase of yours, two trips ago. That brat had a sweet set-up. I will totally compel some of his stuff to come live in your room if you want."

"Would you tell Mom?" Gil asked Damon.

He grinned. "Of course not. But Care, you'd have to cover your tracks, make sure nobody knew who it actually belonged to. You don't want us to leave and then some idiot with a dream of rushing the douchiest of frats wants to beat up my kid."

"I know how to compel people without being an idiot," Caroline said.

"Maybe you can compel me something else," Gil said.

"Whatever you want, sweetie," Caroline said. "Within reason."

Damon looked around the room. No sheets on the bed, but drawers open, with some clothes already dumped in. Not folded. Damon's sense of order and neatness clenched up inside his chest, but he stopped himself from going over to that dresser and freaking tidying up the mess, stopped himself from folding Gil's t-shirts and jeans himself. Told himself that if Gil showed up for all his classes in rumpled clothes, well it was his own damned fault.

There were also posters on the wall. Already.

"Gil buddy?" he said as he collapsed onto the naked bed. Which wasn't really comfortable, but it was a bed and he'd take anything right now. He rubbed his bum knee as his breathing returned to normal. "Have you actually been hanging posters while I've been carrying your goddamn books up the stairs?"

Gil shrugged, opening the box with a pair of scissors that was always unpacked. Why was he even opening boxes? Didn't the kid understand how moving worked? First you lug all your crap up three flights of stairs. Then you unpack the stuff that matters. Then, and only then, do you start hanging decorations on the goddamn wall.

"Gil, I think what your father is saying," Caroline said in her bossiest, I'm not taking shit from you tone, "is that we've been carrying your stuff up the stairs. _Yours_. Not ours. _Yours_. And you've been hanging posters. Which could wait. And on top of that being way too sassy. So why don't you go down to the car? Do the actual work. I think there's one more load."

"And stop being a little shit," Damon said.

"I'm not!"

"Fine. You're just lazy."

"What is your problem?" Gil snapped.

But Damon just lay on the bed, not having the energy to argue.

There were actually a few more trips. Caroline volunteered to help Gil with the heavy lifting. Damon's ego was yelling at him to get back up, but he was just too tired to care about being manly or young, so he stayed put, content to lie here on this crappy mattress and let the young people, with their stupidly strong bodies, do the work he should be doing.

He nodded off, and sleep came easily.

#

His dreams were full of dancing, but not the clubbing he'd done with Caroline and Klaus last night. No, he was with Elena. That college party soon after she'd turned, where he'd taught her to feed on people without killing them. Whitmore. Snatch, eat, and erase. The first time she'd reveled in the blood. The first time she she'd reveled in her own inner darkness, and the danger, the power, and the beauty of being a vampire. Feeling more alive in death than she ever had in life. She'd let herself go that night, for a while at least. Of course she'd ended up with an attack of conscience, pushing him and his hedonism away, courtesy of a judgy Bonnie and an even judgier Stefan. In Stefan's arms at the end of the night, instead of Damon's. But that was one night in a series of nights that had changed the girl who'd chosen Stefan into the woman who chose him, who ended up marrying him.

He dreamt about that night a lot, because it was first time she'd let loose her inner freak, admitting to herself that she was not a perfectly bland cheerleader who never made mistakes. Human 1.0 Elena had been afraid of him, because she'd been afraid of herself, afraid to admit that she craved a little darkness. And back then, he'd fallen hard for vampire Elena, harder than he had for human 1.0 Elena. She was the perfect girl for him, not because she inspired him to be a better man (which she did), but because she was just as crazy as he was. Elena ultimately inspired him to love himself, to love his darkness and his light. To accept himself.

So yes, this dream. This night. The dancing. Her young, lithe body. His young, lithe body. The booze and the blood on their lips. The feeling that anything was possible. Anything could be real.

A kiss. Oh, she was a good kisser. This was nice. And very real. For a dream. Her lips on his lips. Damn, this was an incredibly realistic dream. Her hands in his hair. Her tongue gently darting between his lips.

Damon opened his eyes.

Not a dream.

He smiled up at his wife lazily, drinking in every speck of her.

Elena Gilbert in the flesh. Damn, this woman never ceased to make his insides tingle.

The room was dark except for a lamp she must have flicked on. And empty except for Damon and his wife. Somehow, he'd napped through whatever Caroline and Gil were doing, lost track of the kid he was supposed to be supervising, and then napped right into nighttime. He was killing it at parent of the year.

"Hey," he said, as Elena straddled him and ran her lips down his throat until she found the precise point on the carotid artery where she would bite, if she were a vampire and didn't want to kill him. She bit Damon's skin, lightly and playfully, with her very human teeth, not breaking the skin, but giving him the illusion that maybe she would. Damon felt tingly all over.

"Honey," he said. "As much as I'd love to do, well, anything. ... We're kind of on our kid's bed."

She laughed. And then she made a face, looked like she might throw up. Elena jumped off him, like the bed might bite her. "Oh, god, ew!"

"What are you doing here?" he asked. "What happened to New York? Everything okay?"

"I got her moved in. But then, I was sitting there with her. And I'm thinking, Summer is fine. I got her to calm down and breathe and accept that the internship is going to be awesome. She can handle it from there. But I'm thinking about Gil, and you here. My baby moving into his very first college dorm, and I'm not there. It just felt wrong."

Damon smiled, understanding completely. He got up, hugged her tight, kissed her, let their limbs entangle just a bit, until he forced himself to pull away. If he gave into his basest instinct, he'd have her on the floor. But it was their son's dorm room, and if anybody should get caught making out with a hot chick in here, it should be Gil.

Elena sat down on Gil's cheap, college-provided desk chair.

Damon perched on the edge of the desk and looked at her. Really looked at his wife for the first time in a while. He hadn't seen her in four days, and that was definitely not the norm.

Elena Gilbert, a couple years shy of fifty, was still beautiful. She had the girlish figure she'd had in high school, mostly, a little rounder and curvier than it had been back then, but she was still very much herself. Small and slender, just softer. Her stomach was never going to be flat again, not after giving birth to six children, and he knew it was puckered with stretch marks underneath that sweet little red blouse she was wearing. He knew she was self-conscious about her body, even though for her age she was like a miracle. Her jeans hugged her ass, and sometimes she shared clothes with their two oldest girls.

His wife still radiated that sense of good, of bravery in the face of darkness, and that sense of being just crazy enough to fall in love with him. "So Caroline told me about last night. How late was it? What did I miss?" She took off her glasses, the ones he told her made her look like a sexy librarian, and rubbed at her eyes. She looked tired. Though not the kind of tired you got from partying with vampires and trying to prove that you were still cool. No, Elena looked tired like she was a middle-aged mother, worn out because she'd been running around New York with their high maintenance first-born, and then had flown down and probably rented a car to drive here from Richmond.

In other words, Elena had the air of being a reasonable sort of person who was involved in reasonable sorts of activities. But she looked at him fondly, like she loved him for his unreasonableness. Like maybe she still was enamored with the mysterious stranger she'd met on a lonely road outside of Mystic Falls, when she'd had a fight with then-boyfriend Matt Donovan, and he'd mistaken her for Katherine.

_"I don't know what I want," she'd said that first time they'd met._

_"Well that's not true. You want what everybody wants."_

_"What? Mysterious stranger who has all the answers."_

_"Well, let's just say I've been around a long time. I've learned a few things."_

_"So, Damon, tell me. What is it that I want?_

_ "You want a love that consumes you. You want passion, and adventure, and even a little danger."_

That innocent girl was long gone, but the woman she'd grown into was grinning at him.

"I missed you too, hon," she said, biting her lip. "And I kept thinking of you at that club. Dancing. Moving like you do. Hence me jumping all over you when you were still asleep."

Damon raised an eyebrow. "So we've established that Gil's bed is not the place, but ... How would you feel about some random kid's bed? I bet there's some bed down the hall with nobody on it and nobody even moved in."

Elena grinned but shook her head. "Later, babe. The hotel. Anything you want, even if breaks the bed."

Elena's hair was still brown, if streaked with a bit of gray and short; just this month she'd gone to the salon and come back with a bob, chin-length. For a moment his heart had sunk, because in his mind Elena always, always had long hair. But a moment later he'd felt something new stirring. She looked hot with short hair in a way he'd never expected. Sometimes new and different was magic.

Now, as his wife slid the sexy librarian glasses back on, she grinned at him and swung her hair around, which she did every so often since she'd gotten this new haircut. To feel her hair whip through the air, because apparently the sensation was novel enough to be fun. It was a childlike thing, that motion and the little grin that went along with it. just another quirk that made him love his wife more, and love this long life they had together. Before Elena, he'd never had a relationship that lasted more than a few months. Not in 170-plus years. But then she'd come along, and not just made in go all gooey inside—she'd changed him into a grownup, a family man. She was stability and home. She was also hot.

"Whatcha doing?" she asked.

"Looking at you," he told her. "Enjoying the view. Where's Gil, by the way? Have you even seen him?" he asked. "And what time is it?"

"It's nine o'clock, Damon. I saw him. He thinks I'm being overprotective, something about me trying to get him to be pre-med, which is stupid because he can do whatever he wants, and he's going to, but, you know. He's on this independent streak. But he did seem glad to see me, at least."

"Yeah, that kid has a mouth on him. He's driving me up the freaking wall."

Elena nodded. "Well, solidarity there, hon. Caroline took Gil to get food. She said you'd been asleep for like four hours. I figured I'd stay here, skip the lousy cafeteria food, make sure you were alive. So, Damon, are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"If you were fine you wouldn't be passed out on our child's bed for four hours, when you're supposed to be moving him into his very first dorm."

Damon smiled lazily. "Caroline and Klaus kept me out at the club until dawn. And I may have tried to keep up with Klaus, drinking. I'm getting too old to keep up with his ass," he said. "Should have known better."

She laughed again. "Well, you are 201, after all," she said, as the door opened, and a kid who was definitely not theirs walked in.

"Huh," the boy said. He was very blond, and tanned, and had that California beach bum vibe. He also smelled of weed. Damon wondered if he had any good stuff. "I thought my dad was old."

Damon raised his eyebrows and gave him a snarky look. "Just wait until you're in your forties, kid. It'll feel like you're past 200."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N**

Thank you to everyone who's read, followed, favorited, or reviewed! It's really nice to see that people are enjoying this, and also still reading The New Normal. Here's a new chapter for you, something to read in quarantine :)

Cheers,

Norah

**August 2040**

**Williamsburg, Virginia**

**picking up right where we left off**

Gil's roommate pulled a face, like he thought Damon was not funny, like at all. Ah, yes, this was one of those kids. The kind who thought all adults were idiots and eye-rolled their way through life until they got to twenty-five or so and realized they knew nothing. Or maybe they never realized how stupid they were and just proceeded through life behaving like obnoxious twits. Great.

"I'm Elena," his wife said, reaching out her hand to the kid. "Gil's mom. And this is his dad, Damon."

"Hey," the kid said, shaking Elena's hand. "I'm Ethan. I was waiting to see if the dad who's been passed out in our room all day would ever wake up. You know you snore?"

Yup. That kind of kid. The kind of UVA student who walked into his Charlottesville bar and made him itch to throw Damon throw him out on his ass. Damon shrugged. "Late night."

"Out past eleven?" the kid taunted him.

Taunted Damon-fucking-Salvatore.

"Try four," he said, letting his voice go low and dangerous and just a bit less human. Elena gave him a hard look. He winked at her.

Ethan looked mildly impressed. "Really? Is there someplace around here open that late?"

"Not here. An hour out. We've got an old, friend-like person with deep pockets and the ability to party like you wouldn't believe." Not to mention compulsion to die for. "If he wants stuff to stay open late, it does."

At that moment, Gil walked in the door. He glanced suspiciously at Damon. "Thanks for finally joining the living, dad. I thought you'd sleep through the first day of classes."

"Very funny," Damon said.

Behind his boy was Caroline. And then, for some reason, strutting behind her, was Klaus fucking Mikaelson, wearing a hand-tailored leather jacket despite the Virginia heat.

"Speak of the devil," Elena said, raising her brows at Caroline and Klaus. She was laughing, but she also looked a little pissed. "Really? Partying until four in the morning when you're supposed to be moving a kid into the dorms today? Is anyone here an adult? Have all three of you forgotten that you're parents?"

Ethan was looking from Caroline to Klaus, seemingly confused out of his mind. "They're the old friends with the deep pockets? They're like, my age. Well, that dude looks like he's a senior. Maybe."

Klaus gave Ethan a menacing smile, all the more menacing because it was subtle, looking on the surface as if Klaus was the friendliest guy on the planet, and only hinting at danger and destruction. "Looks can be deceiving, mate. You can never tell how old someone is simply by the cast of his face. And if you value your limbs, you won't refer to me as a 'dude'. "

Ethan frowned. Apparently not picking up on the menace. "But you're a parent? Wait, blond girl, are you a parent? Is this like a teenage pregnancy type of thing? Weird."

Caroline had a look on her face, sad but worse because the sadness was muted, muffled. It was such a familiar cast to her face that Damon's heart hurt for her. He'd seen it every time Caroline was out in public with her daughters in the last ten years, as if her real life was invalidated by her physical appearance. As if her status as a mother was invalidated by the reality of being a vampire who never physically aged.

Damon jumped up and decided on the spot that they weren't going to lie about who Caroline was this time—because fuck it, who cared what this kid thought?

"Can everybody just chill out?" Damon said, his voice low and menacing, his expression just as subtly dangerous as Klaus's. Turning to Ethan, he said, "You, roommate kid? Stop being a dick. Yes, they have kids. They're older than they look. Some people are." When the kid started to sputter, and then Damon's own freaking kid started to sputter, Damon held a hand up and stared them both down. "Seriously, roommate kid, why are you so damned curious about people you don't know? Freaking nosy."

"Dad!" Gil shouted.

"Gil, you can take a damn seat and show some respect for all of the adults in this room. And you know damned well that includes Aunt Caroline, you hear me?" Damon let his voice go all vampirey, which he didn't do often with his children. He reserved this voice for particularly bratty and/or dangerous behavior. Gil sat his ass down and nodded at his father. "I am exponentially fed up with your attitude, young man. There's teenage angst and then there's just being a dick. You'll do well to walk the line."

"Yes, sir," the boy said. "I didn't—"

"Good," Damon snapped. "Now, Ethan. Did your parents teach you nothing about manners, or do you have such a big trust that they've never bothered to educate you in not being a dick. My dad was an awful human being, and very rich, but even he made sure I didn't act like ... that."

The kid started bristling and looked about to say something. Damon held up a hand and glared. Hard. Caroline gave him a weak smile, whispering "thank you."

"Funny thing, I never thought about it," Klaus said, a meditative look on his face. "But nobody let me be a dick either. I am quite awful to almost everyone. But nobody let me do that. I earned it. ... Mate, if you want to be a dick, you have to earn it. And even then it takes years. Decades. Centuries even."

"Metaphorically!" Elena said. "Metaphorical centuries."

"Of course, love." Klaus smiled his sneakily seductive smile, but Elena just rolled her eyes.

"Point is," Damon said. "You don't want to be like him." He cocked his head at Klaus. "Pretty much everyone hates him." Klaus shrugged, as if conceding the point. "Speaking from my own long experience of treating people badly, it just leads to more trouble. I finally started being mildly decent to people, and look at this kickass wife I got." Damon threw an arm around Elena, kissing her forehead. "And Elena, judgy love of my life? Chill."

"Damon!" his wife said, exasperated.

He rolled his eyes. "So I got wasted last night with Caroline and the prince of darkness. Not the first time. Not the last. Sorry if I passed out on a dorm room bed, but you know, what's life without some bad choices and a tequila hangover?"

Elena sighed in that I'm-disappointed-and-you-should-be-a-better man sort of way. But she kissed him. Right smack on the lips.

"Ew!" Gil shouted. "You guys are so gross. Why are you embarrassing me?"

"That's what parents do, sweetheart," Elena said when she came up for air. Turning to Ethan, she said, "This is Caroline Forbes-Salvatore. My best friend from childhood." She smiled warmly at Caroline. "My age. Just really, really, really into plastic surgery."

Caroline broke out laughing. So hard she cried.

Elena added, "She's also our sister-in-law. Gil's aunt."

Caroline's eyebrows rose.

Damon gulped, remembering Caroline and Stefan's beautiful wedding, before everything had gone to hell. The one Elena had never gotten to see. "She married my brother," he mumbled, not sure why they were saying any of this shit to this stupid kid. The plastic surgery line would've sufficed. But somehow, saying these things out loud, validating the truth—it mattered. Caroline had spent her whole adult life lying to people about who she was. For almost twenty years she'd had to pretend, to anyone not in the vampire loop, that she wasn't Lizzie and Josie's mother, but instead a succession of Forbes "cousins." Outside of their close circle of friends, and vampires she and Klaus knew, Caroline never got to be a mom.

So somehow, this truth meant something. Damon felt like they had to keep talking. Not because Ethan deserved answers. Ethan was a nosy dick. But because Caroline deserved a moment of authenticity. Caroline deserved to be seen. As herself. She might look like a teenager who'd never done anything, who was just at the beginning of her life. But Damon knew differently. Caroline Forbes-Salvatore was a badass. She'd helped save the literal world repeatedly. And she was a mother of adult children.

Ethan glanced around the room, from face to face, looking increasingly confused. His gaze landed on Gil, who was now sitting on his bed looking utterly defeated. This clearly was not the "normal" start he wanted with his "normal" roommate. Damon felt for him. But then Gil glanced at Caroline.

The blond vampire was tearing up, rubbing at her eyes to keep from full-on crying. Gil smiled weakly at her. "Yeah, Ethan, that's my Auntie Caroline. She's my mom's age. And yeah plastic surgery. Maybe a little magic." He grinned at Damon, who was so damned proud of his son. Kid could have just stayed quiet. "Her kids, my cousins Josie and Lizzie. They're actually older than me."

Ethan nodded, a nod of confusion, but he seemed to be accepting the story. Then he looked over at Klaus freaking Mikaelson, who was leaning against a wall with casual, elegant grace. And a damned smug look on his face. There were few things Klaus liked more than screwing with humans. "So you're Da— ... I mean Mr. Salvatore's brother?"

Damon felt his heart clench. He opened his mouth to speak, but couldn't. Caroline and Elena also looked to shocked to speak. Caroline, again, was close to tears. Damon tried to say something, but the ridiculous, sickening notion of Klaus being Stefan, coupled with the fact that it was still hard to talk about his brother—it kept Damon mute.

Finally Klaus cleared his throat. The smug look was gone. So was the menacing air. Looking oddly serious (but not dangerous or nasty, that was the odd thing), Klaus murmured, "No, mate. No relation to 'Mr. Salvatore.' " Using air quotes around Damon's name. "His brother died. Many years ago. Twenty-three to be precise." Damon was surprised that Klaus got had bothered to remember when Stefan died. "A great loss. Caroline and I, we started our romance after Damon's brother died. ... Well, our current romance, we did have some exciting encounters when she was in high school. And college, I believe."

Caroline smacked Klaus hard on the side of his head.

Ethan opened his mouth to speak, and Damon was about to shut his next line of questioning down, but Elena beat him to it. Raising a hand, as if signaling that the kid should just shut up. "No! Close your mouth, Ethan. We've all had enough of your questions. None of this is any of your business. And you're just being generally rude. Damon's right. Don't be a dick. The sooner you learn that the better."

Damon kissed her, eliciting more groans from his son.

#

Caroline reached over Damon, grabbing a catalog of some sort, a pen, and a handful of sticky notes. She sat down on the still unmade bed, making notes with a fervor, dedication, and determined look on her face that was so specifically Caroline. Yet another thing Damon wished his brother could witness in 2040—the endurance of Caroline's obsessive drive to be the best.

The douche roommate was now sprawled out on the other twin bed, watching them all with utter fascination.

"Gil, come here, will you?" Caroline said. "I've got your courses for your first semester all mapped out."

Gil groaned but dragged his feet to sit next to her, obviously aware that if he didn't sit where Caroline told him to, there would be complications. "Auntie Care, I already told you, I've picked out my schedule."

"But you're not signed up for a physical science, and you should just get the first requirement of that over with, or you'll be behind. And you're signed up for eighteen credits, which is basically suicide. And ... it says here that you need a writing seminar, but there's no writing seminar not on your schedule."

"Mom!" Gil complained. "Can you tell her I'm a national merit scholar and I can think for myself?"

Damon groaned. "Buddy, as annoying as Aunt Care is, and you can tell her all you want to stay out of your schedule, do not say shit like that. If you go around with this prissy 'I'm a national merit scholar so you have to listen to me,' you sound like a douche. Don't be that guy."

Roommate Ethan laughed. "Dude, your family is crazy."

Gil grinned at the kid and said, "You have no frigging idea, man."

Elena cleared her throat. "Your dad's right, Gil. Don't be that guy."

"Fine," Gil said. "How about, can somebody tell Aunt Caroline to leave me and my schedule alone."

Caroline huffed. "I'm right about the schedule though, and you all know it. Elena, am I right?"

"Honestly, she sounds right. Though I don't think you need to take the science credits right away." And the two of them were off, like if they didn't attack Gil's course schedule the whole world might end. Damon sighed as the micromanaging began.

Klaus, sitting on the floor in front of Gil's bed, leaned back into Caroline's legs. She started lazily running her fingers through his hair. It was odd how they fit right in. Despite Damon's lecture earlier, the vampires looked like they belonged in a college dorm room, their poses ridiculously casual and young. Though Klaus's shoes probably cost more than a year's tuition. His leather jacket probably cost as much as tuition cost for all four years.

Damon looked down at his hands, at his wedding ring. He ran a hand through his graying hair, and the stubble on his chin that was mostly salt with just a bit of pepper these days. He felt distinctly like a parent. Klaus and Caroline might have children older than his, and he knew how much they loved their daughters, but most of their days were not consumed by the daily grind of raising children, or working, or being grownups. Most of their years were engulfed in hedonism and the very particular night that belonged to vampires. As a vampire you didn't age, but you also didn't need to change. Not like Damon. Not like Damon now, at least.

Damon's day to day life was very much a dad life. Even if somebody invented a miracle skin cream that would make him look twenty, there was no way he could go to a college party and really, truly play the part. Which was odd, because he'd been able to do that when he was 100, and 150. Why should 200 be any different?

But the twenty-three years since taking the Cure, they'd changed his _everything_. Dancing 'til dawn last night had been amazing. And frankly needed, hangover be damned. But it wasn't his life anymore. His life was getting up early, making breakfast for six. It used to be eight, before the oldest two had gone off to college. It would be five this year, without Gil at home. Just thinking about Gil's empty place at the table, it hit Damon, again, it hurt, again—the loss he'd feel tomorrow, when he and Elena would drive home from William and Mary, pick up their younger kids from Ric, and walk back into their house. The five of them. Still a big family by most people's standards, but Damon had six children. His house was supposed to hold all eight of them, and it had been years since Damon and Elena's home had held so few permanent residents. Sixteen years, since Lucia was born. And yes, of course, Gil and Joey and Summer were still his babies; they'd be home for weekends and Christmas; but oh, thinking about that empty seat at the table. Another empty seat. That was a wrench to his heart.

Damon's life was nothing like Klaus and Caroline's. Sometimes he did fantasize about the flyaway vamp life he'd left behind. But most days he liked his life, his routine, the constant comfort of having people who loved him (and depended on him) around him all the time. He never would have predicted how much he would settle into the role of being a grownup human, when he told Elena he'd take the Cure with her. He thought he'd grit his teeth through all the boring shit, just so he'd have a chance to be with her, have her love him until she died.

But this life, this dad life—bizarrely, improbably, Damon Salvatore enjoyed the hell out of it. If he had the choice now—between being human with just Elena and getting to go out clubbing much more often, or the life he actually had—bizarrely, he'd choose this life. Getting up early in the mornings because the little ones jumped into Elena and his bed shortly after dawn. Without fail. Dragging the teenagers out of bed. Making breakfast while Elena packed lunches and got backpacks in order. He and his wife joining forces to keep the morning moving forward, to stop Lucia and Gil from either conspiring together or bickering with each other, to make sure that the twins ate something and didn't destroy the house with magic.

Him telling Elena where she'd left her glasses, and then begging her to look for his own reading glasses. Locating her medical bag, her shoes, his briefcase with the laptop he took to the bar with him, so he could work on his new book. Reminding Gil and Lucia that driving themselves to school in the car they'd inherited from Summer and Joey, who had in turn inherited it from Elena, was a privilege, not a right. Then ushering Elena out the door—because Damon didn't have to be at the bar until the afternoon and was therefore on school duty. Driving the little ones to the weird little witch school his best friend ran in Damon's old house. He still drove them his old car, the '69 Camaro that he kept running year after year. Partly because Stefan had rebuilt the engine from almost nothing, so he felt like he owed it to his baby brother to keep it goes. Most mornings, if he stuck around the old house for a while with hanging out with Ric, if headmaster duties were light, or wandering around giving impromptu lessons on how to spot attempts at compulsion, or how to stake vampires, or how to make friends with vampires (because Damon thought that the species really ought to find ways to get along). Sometimes Damon trained with Ric if one of them needed to blow off steam. They traded war stories about parenthood and job drama and run-ins with a whole host of annoying Council members. Hardly ever about vampires, not these days. There hadn't been a major supernatural threat in Mystic Falls for over two decades.

Damon's real life was driving to his Mystic Falls bar, the Diabolical II, around noon, opening the place up, then spending the early afternoon writing, when the bar was fairly empty. Reading glasses perched on his nose. He in the middle of revising his third vampire "novel," which covered the Elena era and was harder to write than anything he'd ever written, maybe because he had the opportunity to really piss off his wife if he told the entire truth. Damon did not want to go without sex for all the book reviews in the world.

Damon's life was managing his motley crew of bartenders and cooks and servers. It was family dinners, and bailing Joey out of jail far too many times. Guys' weekends with Tommy that were fun, but increasingly odd because of how much older he looked than his childhood friend, and awkward because Tommy's life was just as foreign to him as Caroline's. But Damon kept that friendship going, kept it real. He kept his toes in the supernatural world, lecturing about vampires at the Salvatore School any time Ric asked. The writing helped. As much as Damon was so thoroughly steeped in his day to day humanity, he felt like if he were to cut all ties with the past, and with his vampire self, he'd end up some shell of a person. No matter how important his wife and children were to him, no matter what his driver's license said, Damon had not been born in 1987. He'd been a vampire for more than three quarters of his long life, three times as long as he'd been human, even when you counted his first human life in the nineteenth century. Damon didn't want to pretend that the vampire life hadn't happened, even the worst decades, even his greatest sin and cruelest deeds. He was all of it. He had to be all of it, or he'd be a fraud at some PTA meeting. Or, and this was the worst possibility, he'd turn into his father.

So he talked magic with Bonnie. And he kept tabs on Caroline, always picked up the phone when she called in the middle of the night, even if Elena said she'd prefer to sleep and talk in the morning. Talked to Caroline about the life of a vampire, which was soothing to her somehow, because he could tell her when she was being crazy and when she was just being a vampire. And she gave him a link to his past, which made him feel less crazy in those moments when he still felt like a vampire, or an outsider, or an imposter. But the bulk of his life had nothing to do with blood, booze, or death.

#

"I don't see why I can't have a car," Gil was saying over brunch at the only ritzy restaurant in town. His son was sitting between Elena and Damon. Caroline and Klaus sat across from them. They were at a table outside, in a little patio area in the middle of this thoroughly ridiculous historic district. Everything, including a number of modern, living people employed by the town, dressed up so the street looked like it was still Colonial Williamsburg. It seemed to be the tail end of the eighteenth century. A man down the street appeared to be impersonating George Washington and giving a speech to tourists, for reasons passing Damon's understanding.

"Klaus?" Damon asked, taking a sip of his Bloody Mary. "You think they're getting the time period right? It was before my time obviously. But if you look at this chick," he said, pointing at a woman in period dress walking by the bookstore across the street. "I'd say she's wearing the sort of dress my grandmother might have worn. 1830's or so. And this is supposed to be before the Revolution."

Klaus poured something from a flask that smelled suspiciously like fresh, non-blood-bag blood (even human and after all these years, Damon could tell the difference) into his own Bloody Mary. He turned around to look at the woman and shook his head. "Granted I was never in Virginia during that time, but that woman's costume is all wrong. I think this whole project they have going on, it's a hodge podge. Some of it's accurate. Some of it's not. Some it is just ... odd."

Elena laughed as she leaned over Gil and stole bacon from Damon's plate. "You don't need a car. You can walk to everything here. And besides, it's against the rules for freshmen to have cars. I read the whole handbook last night."

"Auntie Care can just compel some secretary to give me an override pass."

Damon cleared his throat, looked hard at his third son, and said, "Gilbert, we let you get away with a lot because you're the kid who never breaks things, do you get that? She already compelled you a mini-fridge. I'm not buying you a damned car."

Gil gave him puppy dog eyes. "Come on, Dad. We're rich. Even if Mom likes to pretend like we aren't rich."

"Gil!" Elena snapped. "It doesn't matter how much your father has in the bank."

"Or in off-shore accounts," Klaus said, now attempting to steal bacon from Damon's plate too. Damon swatted his hand away.

"Whatever," Gil said, pushing his pancakes around on his plate. "You all suck."

Munching on bacon, he said, "Gil, you need to understand the dangers of privilege. If something is important, I've got no problem spending obscene amounts of money on you. But you don't need a car at a school where you can walk to anything, in a town where you can walk to anything. I've seen enough spoiled brats, over three different centuries, and you're not going to be one of them.

Gil gave him a look that made it clear he didn't get it and was so-over-Dad.

"Don't look at me like that," Damon snapped. "You know you get away with plenty because you don't break things. If memory serves, you got to go hang out in Paris with Aunt Care for three weeks this spring, and Summer and Joey didn't. Yes? You know it. Summer and Joey, they break things. Hell, I had to bail Joey out of jail just last month."

"What?" Elena shrieked.

Damon had forgotten that he'd never mentioned that particular weekend's adventure to his wife. Great.

Caroline looked up, intrigued. Gil laughed delightedly, clearly remembering the weekend.

Klaus grinned. "Well done, Joey. What was the infraction?"

Elena looked like her blood might boil this very moment. Damon shrugged and said, "Sorry, hon. It was just a stupid boy thing. I didn't want it to be a big deal. So I took care of it. Matt agreed to look the other way."

"It does help to be friends with the town sheriff," Klaus supplied, for whatever reason feeling like it was his job to provide some commentary. "The man is a complete fool, so no doubt he let Damon talk him into shutting his mouth. Though why he didn't tell the lovely Elena, now that's an interesting one."

"Matt is not a fool," Caroline snapped at Klaus. "But he really should have told you about this, Elena. I might have a word with him. Maybe he thought Damon would tell you because, oh, I don't know, Damon is supposed to be an adult."

"201, he keeps claiming," Elena said, still looking murderous. "Why did Joey get arrested this time?"

Damon tried to remember. "Oh, hon, it was nothing. He and Glenn—"

"That's the boyfriend, right?" Caroline said. "I think he's trouble, by the way."

"Ten points to my sister-in-law for her OCD attention to detail. Five points deducted for general judginess," Damon said. "I happen to like the kid. He's reckless but he means well, and Joey can more than take care of himself." His oldest son was one of the most powerful witches Bonnie had ever come across, so Damon didn't worry about him regardless of the boy he was with. Summer was just as powerful, and he did worry about her and boys, which was probably sexist and reflected his true age. But regardless, this judginess about Joey's boyfriend—who admittedly smoked a lot of pot and kept getting into trouble at college, but wrote love poems that made Joey tear up—it was unfounded. The boys had been together a year and a half, and Glenn hadn't batted an eye when he found out that he was dating a witch. Tolerance counted for a lot, where Damon was concerned. "Anyway, they snuck into the old graveyard, had a little party going on with a few of the kids from the School. I guess a couple kids from Joey's year had come back. Like homecoming, but in a graveyard."

Elena huffed. "And you don't think this was a big deal?"

"Like you never partied in all sorts of outdoor locations in Mystic Falls, places you weren't really supposed to be, underage drinking. You broke those kind of rules all the time, Elena!"

Elena glared at him. "Am I wrong?" he asked her. Turning to the blonde, he added, "Caroline, am I wrong?" They both glared at him but said nothing. "Anyway, they were toasting graves, had a little extra fun at the Salvatore tomb, got a little rowdy, a little loud. Somebody had brought speakers for some reason. And a busybody lady called in a noise complaint. Think it might have been that little snake Lindsey Fell. So I got woken up in the middle of the night, when Joey used his one phone call to get my ass out of bed. And I dealt with it."

"And you didn't tell me? You just snuck out of our room in the middle of the night?"

Damon sighed. "You weren't there. You were doing that weekend in Montreal with Caroline and Bonnie. I didn't want to tell you, then you get all upset over nothing, come back, ruin the fun girls' weekend. Which believe me you needed. I was doing a public service, babe."

"Damon!" Elena said. "I can't believe you."

"I can," Klaus said.

"Shut up, Klaus," said Damon, Elena, and Caroline all at once.

Klaus laughed with pure delight.

Turning back to Gil, Damon said, "The point is that you are in a unique position to slide under the radar, because you don't pull stunts like that, or like Summer. And I know you get away with a lot of stuff we don't know about. But you can't go around acting like you're untouchable, or talking to adults like you were yesterday, or just expecting cars to fall from the sky magically."

"It doesn't have to be a fancy car," Gil was saying. "I'll take a Toyota."

"If Gil is getting away with things, because we're too busy bailing Joey out of jail, I don't think we should be encouraging that either," Elena chided.

"I'm not encouraging anything, I'm just stating some facts. And the point is, before anybody else interrupts my goddamn lecture, because look at me, I'm having my dad moment, you got me, Gil? You, young man, are not as smart as you think you are. Why not? Because you're seventeen. And everybody's an idiot at seventeen. Even the likes of Gilbert Lorenzo Salvatore, whose grades are so good we just want to cover you in praise. And we do. You're just as much an idiot as Joey. Only without the criminal record. So maybe don't talk to me like I'm a chump, or like I'm your friend, you got it?"

Gil opened his mouth to say something.

Damon raised his hand, a warning. "I'd watch my tone if I were you, kiddo."

Gil rolled his eyes but nodded. "Yeah, fine. Sorry, Dad."

Damon shrugged and glanced at Elena. "Should I take his apology?"

She shrugged. "For now. Let's see if there's any more insubordination."

"Fair enough," Damon said. "Fair enough."


	3. Chapter 3

A/N

I wasn't expecting to have another chapter so soon, but I started thinking about how to move this sequel to my book-length New Normal towards a conclusion, and this just came to me. This is not the end, but you'll see where I'm going with the plot. Maybe. If you pay attention to some dialogue and exposition towards the end. Picking up two months later.

...

**October 2040**

**Mystic Falls, Virginia**

Damon was playing pool with Sajen, drinking in stories of his old employee's life in New York City with Bonnie, trying not be jealous of the perennially-shorts-wearing dork and Bon Bon of all people, and sipping Bourbon and Coke (heavy on the Coke, light on the Bourbon because his tolerance at forty-eight was worse than ever) when the outside door flung open and Joey walked in, followed by his boyfriend.

"Kiddo!" Damon yelled, handing his cue stick to Sajen as he ran towards his oldest son. Excited, like Damon was a little kid seeing a friend for the first time in ages. He threw his arms around his boy. The Salvatore kid who was most like Damon, the child he always felt like he truly understood. He missed Joey something fierce.

"This is a surprise," Damon said, laughing like a schoolboy. Running his hand through his son's dark blond, spiky hair, he muttered, "You know if you put any more gel in your hair, you'll look like a douche, right? It's a fine line, Joe, an achingly fine line between looking cool and looking like a douche." The boyfriend was standing there with his own red hair buzzcut so, so short, and a new tattoo on his neck. It looked like a symbol from a spell. Joey must have helped him pick it out, or, more likely, designed it. Elena was going to love that tattoo. Add it to her list of gripes about the trouble-maker boyfriend. Damon grinned and shook the trouble-maker's hand. "Hey Glenn. Good to see you. You haven't seen enough of Mystic Falls?" The kid had spent half the summer with them. Damon suspected that Glenn hated his own parents. From hints dropped by both boys, it seemed that Glenn's folks might be homophobic to the nth degree.

"Hey Mr. S." Glenn's handshake was firm and forthright as always. His father had taught him well. "You know, the old M.F., it's so quaint, it's kind of cute. And you have all those festivals, it's like you're living in this fake town. Like a TV show town."

Damon laughed. Yeah, he liked the boyfriend. Maybe he could find him a turtleneck to wear before he saw Elena. "No festival this weekend, Glenn. But next week, we've got a beauty for you. It's the masquerade ball at the old Lockwood mansion. You got a tux?" He'd been paying for the event for the past two decades, a bit of penance for killing Tyler Lockwood for no good reason.

Glenn shrugged. "I can pull something together."

Damon rolled his eyes. "For this kind of thing, you need the real deal. I can probably find you an old one of mine. Though, on the other hand, if you two show up in jeans and t-shirts, with homemade masks, that might make the Council die, literally, and that would be worth showing up for."

Joey laughed. "Yeah. Let's do that."

But Damon looked hard at his kid, trying to figure out what the hell was going on here. "You're supposed to be in school, Joey."

Joey gave him this defiant stare back.

Damon rolled his eyes. He had invented the defiant stare. "Please tell me you boys haven't gotten yourselves arrested again, or thrown out of school, or set fire to something."

Joey shook his head. "Dad, it's actually not us that's the problem."

Damon frowned. "Is someone else a problem? Do I need to go yell at some other idiot? Cause if there's some other idiot for me to blame for my own kid missing Thursday classes, please do tell."

Joey looked at Glenn. Glenn shrugged and looked back at Joey. Joey stared at Damon like he was hoping Damon could read his mind. Times like these, Damon Salvatore really missed compulsion. Not that it would work on this idiot, but the boyfriend could be compelled. If Damon wasn't a wussy ass human.

"Joey!" Damon snapped. "Are you just here out of the blue to say hi? Maybe you just decided, fuck it, Dad has too much money in the bank, I might as well piss away my tuition money that Mom and Dad are paying to the obscenely expensive private university I have decided to attend, when it suits my fancy. Also, totally piss off Mom, because she gets itchy when I don't do schoolwork. Or, let me ask you again, young man, is something wrong?"

Joey looked at Glenn again. Glenn looked at Joey, then at Damon. Then back at Joey. Damon thought his head might explode.

"Oh, hey Sajen's here!" his oldest son yelled out, like he was talking to a crowd. The bar wasn't crowded, it was five o'clock, barely, but there were a smattering of people sitting around the room, drinking and munching on appetizers. The people eating at the table nearest the pool table did begin staring. Great. What Damon needed right now was to have some busybody complain about his lack of manners at the next Council meeting, like somehow that mattered.

"Good to see you, Joey," Sajen said. "Bonnie and I are here with the kids for a few days."

Joey looked hard at Glenn again. Then back at Damon. Then back at Glenn. Then he whispered, "You think my Aunt Bonnie might be able to help out here?"

"I think your mom is the one who should be helping," Glenn whispered back.

Damon rolled his eyes. And then clapped his hands together like a freaking camp counselor. "Boys! I'm right here. And I might not have vamp hearing, but my human hearing's just fine. I'm also not so old that I'm freaking senile. So, here's the deal. One of you is going to spill the beans about this mysterious problem that actually has nothing to do with you, except for the fact that it clearly does because you drove down from freaking New York to talk to me about it."

Joey groaned and opened his mouth to speak.

Damon raised a hand, signaling to his kid to just shut his mouth for right now. "No, Joseph Salvatore. Shut it. My turn. So, here's what you ponder. You and tweedle-dee here, you understand that by being here, in this state, you're pissing away lots of money, given to you by me and Glenn's parents. So you two should be thinking, yes, of course we understand that money is a real thing, that lots of kids would kill to have the chance to go to this fancy college? Yes, we understand that, because we are not in fact morons, you might be thinking. Yes, we understand that we have responsibilities to sit in college classes we are signed up for, and get adequate to good grades, even if we are not 100% thrilled about our American history professor, and even if said American history professor gets half of the nineteenth century flat-out wrong? We understand that because we have chosen to go to a private university that has more money than all the gods put together but just wants more of mine, we are going to suck it up and attend our classes? Yes, of course we understand that, because if we didn't we would be too dumb to get into fucking Columbia. So obviously we have some good reason for standing in Dad's bar on a school day, hundreds of miles away from our goddamn school!"

"Dad!" Joey yelled.

"Just fess up, kiddo. Or I'm going to call your mom. You've got this idea that I'm some kind of pushover, cause I bail your ass out of jail. But I'm not a pushover, I just don't give a damn about most laws. I am Damon Salvatore, and you do not want to get on my bad side. If you want a really fun day, I could try to calculate the number of people I've killed. You get me?"

After what felt like a lifetime, Glenn threw up his hands in the air and said, "It's Summer. She's in the car. And she won't come out. And we tried to take her to Mrs. S., but she wouldn't get out of the car. And I told Joey we should go talk to Mrs. S., but he wouldn't. He said he'd talk to you. He said something about how he didn't know what to say to his mom. And Summer said she'd rather die than talk to you. Or her. Or anybody but Joey. But since Summer wouldn't get out of the car, we're here. And we brought her down because Joey was worried out of his mind and said that she needed help, more than he could give her. And I came because I love your son and I'm not going to apologize for it."

Damon was impressed with tattoo boy here. He nodded at Glenn. "I know you do. Thank you for coming. But what's wrong with Summer?"

Both boys were looking at their feet.

Damon frowned. He glanced at Sajen. His old bar manager shrugged. "Has Summer gotten kicked out of her internship or something?" Damon asked. "Did she get arrested, or set a fire."

Joey and Glenn shook their heads.

"Is she sick?"

Joey shook his head, but Glenn said, "Not exactly, but we did have to stop about ten times so she could puke."

Joey kicked his boyfriend hard in the shin.

Damon's brow rose. "Are you telling me that your sister has the stomach flu and you decided the best thing for her was a ten hour car trip?"

The boys shook their heads.

"Uh oh," Sajen said.

Damon whipped around to see Sajen's face. The man looked like he was really worried, but also like he might start laughing any minute. "What?" Damon practically yelled.

Now Sajen did start laughing.

"That's not cool, Sajen," Joey said. "She's really, really freaked out."

Sajen appeared to be having a fit. He kept raising his hand up, as if apologizing for the fit of giggles.

"Like seriously, not cool, dude," Glenn said, looking monumentally disappointed in the older man.

Damon was completely baffled by the whole situation. And Sajen's totally out of character dickishness. "What the fuck is going on here? Joey, just go get your sister and have her tell me whatever it is she needs to tell me, because I can't deal with any more of this ridiculous bullshit. Whatever it is, it can't be as bad as you're all making it. And tell her she can just get over her own damned self. Sitting in the car. Refusing to come inside. Acting like a freaking melodramatic crazy person. Your mom and I raised her better than that. And Sajen, come on, get it together! How could this possibly be that funny? You think my daughter being sick is funny?"

Sajen gulped and managed to spit out, "How long has the vomiting been going on for, Joey?"

Joey bit his lip and mumbled something.

"What was that?" Damon asked.

"About a month," his oldest son said.

Damon's eyes widened and he started walking towards the door. "Are you kidding me? Your sister's been sick for a month and this is the first we're hearing of it? She could be really sick!" His heart was going a million miles an hour, thinking of all the terrible things that could be going wrong with his oldest daughter, in some ways his most precious child because she was his first. Summer had taught him how to be a dad, how to love a child.

"Wait, Dad!" Joey yelled. "She's not sick. She's pregnant."

And it was like the room started spinning.

Sajen went into a fit of giggles again. Damon stormed over to his friend, grabbed him by the collar and shoved him up against a wall. "Are you kidding me, Sajen? You think my baby girl being, you know, is funny? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck you, you two-faced asshole!" Damon thought he might pass out from the shock of hearing that word and Summer in the same sentence. But the rage he felt at Sajen's laughter, it was keeping him upright. Boy, did he miss fangs, because right now he would love to sink his fangs into Sajen's throat, love the feeling of the blood rushing to his face, rushing all through him. Sometimes Damon missed the blood something fierce. That moment, right before you drank, when the world went quiet, and there was no pain, no past, no future. Just hunger. And your fangs extending. The sound of a human heartbeat. Under certain circumstances, blind hunger or blind rage, or sometimes the kind of horniness that overwhelms your whole damn mind and body in one fell swoop—that steady thrumming of a heart, it was the loudest thing on the planet. Louder than police sirens or a plane landing or Niagara Falls, or Nascar.

Sajen had finally stopped laughing. "You can let go of me, Damon." But Damon just shoved him harder up against the wall.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" he hissed, his words low and dangerous. The vampire in him was coming out. "I could end you, right here, right now."

"Dad!" Joey yelled. "Could you please try to act like a normal person?"

Sajen's glasses were askew. He looked a little frightened, which was heartening. "I'm sorry, Damon. I didn't mean it like that. Of course I care about Summer. I've know her since she was three days old. It's just, I was thinking about Damon Salvatore being a grandpa, and it was like the funniest thing I'd ever heard, and you know how once you get this funny thought in your head, you can't let it go, and then the fact that you're laughing too hard, that's funny. And then—"

Damon sighed and dropped his hands from his friend. He was still disgusted with the man, but it probably wasn't worth murdering, or pretending to murder. Stepping back, he saw that a crowd had formed around them. Great. "Everybody just go back to your seats," Damon snapped. "Nothing to see here."

He ran his hands threw his graying hair. Grandpa. No. No. No. That was not something he was ready for. His littlest girls were in third grade, for fuck's sake. Grandpa. That was for old men, biologically old. And how the fuck had this happened? Who the fuck had knocked up his little girl? And why ... how could Summer let this happen? How could Elena let this happen? She was supposed to talk to the girls about this stuff. Damon handled Joey and Gil, when it came to the sex talk etc etc, and Elena handled the girls.

Nate Salvatore's face flashed in Damon's mind. Damon'd been a year or two older than Summer when he'd knocked up Nate's great-great-whatever grandmother, fathering his own little bastard child, the kid he hadn't known existed for a century and a half. The kid he totally failed by being supposedly dead so the poor mother had to raise him without a father. Damon, Damon was a stupid shit in 1863. And a soldier. It was kind of a soldier thing to do. It's not like he'd had a real future that he was building. Damon was a screwup, waiting for his father to die so he'd inherit the plantation. Then he'd fallen in love with a selfish vampire, gotten himself killed and turned, and then there was no human future to protect. No job, no family, just the blood.

But his little girl, she wasn't like him. Summer had a future, a career she was building towards in graphic design, this internship she'd stressed herself out to get. Summer was supposed to better than him.

Elena was going flip out.

He was practically running to the door with Joey hot on his heels. "Dad, please, don't yell at her!"

Damon couldn't breathe. He couldn't listen to his son. He couldn't listen to anybody. He couldn't think. Everything was red. Everything was intense and confusing and every bone in Damon's body was telling him to murder the fool who'd done this to her. Also to scream at his little girl that she should know better, she should be better. She was better, goddammit. Summer was better than this.

Even in the heat of the rage, Damon also knew that he was way, way out of his depth. Why hadn't they gone to Elena? Elena would know what to do. To say. She was a doctor for Christ's sake. And a woman. This was a woman thing, anyway. What the hell was Joey thinking, coming here, trusting Damon with something so important? Trusting him with Summer's fragile feelings.

Why would Summer let her brother bring her here, to him. Damon was not up for this conversation. He was not good enough. Even after twenty-two years of fatherhood, Damon was not a good enough father to make this conversation work.

In the parking lot, he caught sight of the '74 Mustang he and Joey had worked on all summer, to get it running after they'd rescued the car from a junkyard. Damon had channeled Stefan's mechanic's brain all summer as he helped his son rebuild the engine. But really, it was all Joey. Joey was the mastermind, Joey was the one who'd made the car purr. Damon was his loyal assistant.

Summer sat on the trunk of the car, her legs crossed like a young child sitting on the floor of a kindergarten class. She had a book open on her lap and an apple in her hand. As she took a bite from the apple, she looked up and saw him.

Summer looked terrified. Of him.

He'd been about to scream at her. For being so damned irresponsible. For not telling her parents herself, but putting her brother in this bizarre situation, for making Joey break this crazy as fuck news. For having sex, at all, because she was still his baby and how dare she let a man touch her. For growing up. For screwing up her future. For screwing up the future he'd envisioned for her. She wasn't him. She wasn't supposed to be him. She was supposed to be better than this.

She was supposed to take after her mother.

But in that moment, looking at his daughter—her appearance so like Elena, though her hair was curlier, wilder, and her eyes were Damon's ice blue—Damon's heart melted. He couldn't yell. Just as it had when she was two years old and had turned the librarian's hair blue with polka dots, and he'd wanted to scream, but he just couldn't, because her face, her face wouldn't let him.

She did a sort of half smile, a fake smile. An attempt at bravery.

Summer didn't look any different. His baby's figure was as slender as ever. But a month of morning sickness. Damon had enough experience with pregnant women to know, this was not a brand-new thing. Fuck. Fuck. Double fuck.

But somehow, the only thing that mattered was that Summer was sitting on a car in a parking lot, looking terrified, and so young. Her shoulders were hunched in a way they rarely were. Summer was a girl who knew herself, who stood up straight, who faced the world like it owed her something. Only when things got really bad did Summer Salvatore hunch her shoulders.

His little girl. Regardless of how stupid she might have been to let this happen, this was his little girl, and she was scared. Like she'd been when she was little and had decided that clowns were serial killers.

Damon ran across the parking lot until he was standing right next to the Mustang. He grabbed Summer's book and apple, laying them on the roof of the car, before grabbing her hands and gently sliding her down off the trunk. And into his arms.

"Sweetie," Damon said. "It's okay. It's really okay."

"I thought you would blow up."

He laughed. "Well, I am exceptionally good at blowing up. But ... Look, sweetie, we'll figure this out. I promise."

She collapsed into his arms and just sobbed. Damon let her. He'd learned long ago not to tell his children to stop crying, unless it was over something stupid, like child x had stolen a pencil from child y and then shoved it up the nose of child z. If the tears were warranted, Damon thought it was best to just let them flow. The problem Stefan had, the thing that had led him to being a ripper, was that he couldn't deal with his own feelings, his own darkness, his own crap. Damon had failed his brother in so many ways. He was determined to not fail his children. So he let Summer cry until his shirt's shoulder and collar were drenched.

"You're not mad?" Summer asked, her voice muffled because her head was still buried in his shoulder.

Damon cleared his throat. "Oh, Summer. I am _mad._ Believe me, kiddo, I'm mad. But what's done is done, and I'm going to help you through this. And don't worry so much. We'll talk to Mom. This is going to be hard, kiddo, you're in for a rough few years, believe me, I know. But I've got you, okay? Daddy's got you. I can be mad and still care that you're hurting, okay?"

Summer pulled away a bit, but still held onto him. "I'm sorry," she said.

Damon smiled at her, smile tight but real. "Look, I'm the last person to play the morality police, okay? You getting knocked up, it's child's play next to what I was doing for, you know, a century and a half."

She laughed.

From behind them, Joey said, "I don't think it's all her fault, Dad."

Damon's eyes widened. "Did someone force you, baby girl? Because I am still capable of murder. I have a whole list of ways it can be done. I've got weapons. I've got creativity. I've got the patience of a vampire, even if I don't have fangs."

Summer shook her head and pulled away from him. She grabbed the apple off the top of the car and began to devour it. As she ate, she started talking, apparently not caring about the manners he'd drilled into the kids, about the necessity to eat first and then talk so you could avoid talking with your mouth open like a peasant. "It's my boyfriend's. Darrell."

Damon frowned. "What boyfriend? Since when do you have a boyfriend? I thought you and Mr. Pre-law pretentious piece of shit broke up. Wait, that's not Darrell is it?" Damon wrinkled his nose in disgust, thinking about the asshole blue-blood.

"No!" Summer and Joey yelled at the same time, their voices so exasperated that it made it Damon laugh, especially the whole unison thing. "It's like—" Summer began but stopped for reasons passing understanding.

Joey giggled, actually giggled, as he said, "She means boyfriend in the loosest of terms. It's super casual. Basically just sex."

Summer glared at her brother. Damon thought he might be sick. It was one thing for his daughter to have sex with a boyfriend, even a douche. But to just be randomly sleeping with some guy, like a trollop. What on Earth had his kids gotten themselves into?

"Darrell and I've been dating, but it's been casual. Not exclusive."

"How very modern of you," Damon said.

Summer rolled her eyes.

"And in this casual exploration of human sexuality, did you forget what a condom was?"

"No!" Joey interjected. "That's the thing."

Damon laughed and turned to face his oldest son. "Really? You want to start talking about whether your sister used a condom, that's a comfortable conversation for you? And by the way, I know you can't knock up Glenn, but you better be using a condom too."

Joey rolled his eyes. "I know. And so does Summer. She's on the pill. Mom prescribed it for her like six years ago. And she also uses condoms, just to be safe, right Summer?"

Damon was so icked out he didn't know where to begin. And this pill thing, news to him.

Summer nodded. And her expression was serious now. "Dad, we don't think this is just me and Darrell being dumb, him putting on a condom wrong, or bad luck. There's rumors going around in witch circles. Remember eight years ago when there were a lot of witch babies born?"

Damon sighed. "Vividly. I got twins out of that. So did Aunt Bonnie, by the way. None of us has slept since."

"It's happening again," Joey said. "And also, there's something in the air. It's, I don't know, witch weird? It's not tangible. But it's something weird, witches are picking up on it. Nothing bad has happened yet."

"Okay," Damon said, at a loss for what to say or think.

"Dad," Summer said, her hand on her flat belly, rubbing it absentmindedly like she didn't realize she was doing it. "You might be able to feel it. The magic. With your weird nature instinct thing."

Ever since they'd let loose the magic from the magic hotspot, over two decades ago, Damon and Elena had been tuned into nature and magic in a way that most people never experienced. It was like an instinct Damon had, like an extra sense.

Damon concentrated on his breathing, wondering if Summer was right. He concentrated on his feet planted on the ground, imagining the earth beneath the concrete, imagining that by standing on this piece of the planet, that he was connected to it. Bonnie had taught him to center himself, to be attuned to the Earth and the elements, to listen so that if nature was trying to tell him something, he heard it. He wasn't a servant of nature, she'd told him, but he was a friend of nature. And if he listened, maybe that was the point.

Suddenly, he felt it. The Earth was vibrating. The whole planet was buzzing. "It's like everything is more than it should be," Damon said.

Joey nodded. Summer said, "It's magic. What you're feeling, it's magic running wild." Finishing the last of her apple, she threw the core into the backseat of Joey's car, kissed her father on the cheek, and said, "Daddy, I'm starving. Would you make me some cheese fries?"

Damon frowned at his daughter. "I thought you were puking all day?"

Summer laughed, actually laughed. "That was in the morning. Now I'm starving."

Damon wrapped an arm around Summer's waist and began leading her towards the door. Thinking about how in a few months, it would be different to hold onto her like this. Elena had been pregnant five times, with six children, between 2017 and 2032. For the first decade and a half of their marriage, she'd been pregnant a quarter of the time. Damon was well-acquainted with the pregnant female body.

But his daughter. Oh, sweet lord, his daughter's belly swelling to the point where she looked like an alien was inside her. He shivered, though it was seventy-five degrees outside, and muggy.

When they reached Joey, Damon put his other arm around Joey's waist and the three of them walked towards the bar together. "Joey Salvatore, you're a good brother. I hope your sister appreciates that."

"I do," Summer said.

"Good," Damon told her. "Now, my major problem, and I want you both to understand how this hurts my ego and my sense of being a youngish person." He laughed at himself, but it was a hollow laugh. He was actually freaking out about the implications of this news, for his particular ego. "I've just been told by my asshole of a friend inside, who still deserves a beat-down but is, unfortunately correct, that this little surprise makes me a grandfather, and well, I don't think I'm ready for that."

Joey laughed. "What, Dad, are you waiting 'til you're 250?"

Damon shrugged. "I was thinking 300. But seriously, I am way to young and handsome to be called Grandpa, so we're going to have to come up with some other cooler, younger name. I'm not even fifty, biologically speaking. And I still get stared at by the ladies. And some gents, mind you. So I really don't want to lose my edge. So Grandpa is out."

Summer pulled away from Damon. "Dad, that's only if I have the baby."

Now Damon couldn't breathe again. "Are you talking about—"

Summer nodded. "I haven't made a decision."

"A woman's right to choose, yes," Damon was saying, feeling like he was quoting off a pamphlet. "But sweetie, that's your baby."

"I know you're not from this century, but Dad, it's my choice."

Damon had to stop. Bent over. He literally could not breathe.

"Daddy," Summer said. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. But, I didn't plan on this."

Damon nodded. Stood up. Kissed her on the top of her head. "Of course, baby. Your body, you do what you want but—" and now his voice broke. He told himself not to say anything more but he couldn't stop himself. Already, without him even knowing it, his stupid head had started to picture a baby. A baby of his baby. Summer holding its tiny body. Damon holding out his index finger and letting the boy's tiny hand wrap around his finger, just as he'd done with each of his six children. Somehow in his mind the baby was a boy. No logical reason. But he could see this child. His, yes, as icky as the word felt, his grandchild. Damon could see himself holding the sleeping baby against his chest. He could feel the tiny body, the heartbeat, the breath. Bright blue eyes. Dark hair."

"Dad?" Summer asked. "What is it?"

"Dad?" Joey echoed.

"I'm sorry kiddo," he told his oldest child. "You do what's right for you. I know you've got this internship. And we're going inside, for cheesefries, and to call your mom. Okay? She'll talk this over with you. And you'll do what you'll do. And I'll respect that. I'm not a relic from the Civil War."

"Okay," Summer said, grabbing his hand. "That's cool of you."

"I am nothing if not infinitely cool."

"What's wrong, Dad?" Joey said.

While he was screaming at himself, inside his head to shut up, Damon said, "It's crazy. I know. I just could picture it. You'd be such a good mom, Summer. You would be. Maybe you think you'd suck, but you would be great. And your mom would be a kick-ass grandma. And I could—sweetheart, I just started thinking of this baby inside you as yours. As ours. I, I could be a grandpa," he said, his voice so damned small. "I mean, just ask Nate. He even calls me granddad."

Summer and Joey just laughed.

And it was Joey who said, "But, Dad, this isn't Nate. This is a fetus inside her that isn't born yet. And, until she decides, that's all it is." So fucking modern it made Damon want to scream.

They were talking about killing his, his, his grandchild. And he understood, he did. He would respect her choice. Whatever it was. Abortion. Adoption. Keep the baby. Hell, he and Elena could raise it, if it came to that. But maybe this baby wouldn't be, and he could wrap his head around that, he could. He could understand that a woman's body was hers, that not every unplanned pregnancy was something that should last.

But Summer would be a good mother. She was out of college, at least. But it didn't matter. It didn't. Why did he have to picture the damn baby.

Damon took a deep breath, threw his arms around his kids again, and led them into his bar, Your Diabolical Plan II.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N

And now, because I am truly insane and have no regard for how late is too late to stay up writing, here is another chapter, hot on the tail of the last one. Have fun with the Gilbert-Salvatores :)

Again, this is unbetaed, so I apologize for any typos.

-Norah

...

**October 2040**

Mystic Falls, Virginia

"Dr. Gilbert?" The seventeen year-old girl sitting on the exam table—wearing nothing but a blue paper draped over her pelvis and skinny legs, and a t-shirt advertising Elena's sixteen year-old daughter's favorite punk band—stared up at Elena with an expression she knew well. As a doctor, she'd seen this expression too many times. As a mother, she'd seen it too, and it always cut her to the core. But right this minute, Elena was thinking about the patient who'd stared up at Elena last week, with this same look of shock and devastation, and desperate hope like Elena could somehow fix everything. And on her own daughter. Who'd collapsed into Elena's arms after Damon had convinced Summer to talk to her mother. "What am I going to do? I can't. I can't be this—"

But it was more than that. She'd been in this position so many times, in so many contexts. As Elena smiled gently at Lily Bennett, who was incidentally Bonnie's third cousin twice removed and a good friend of Elena's daughter Lucia—her mind flashed back thirty years. To junior year and Caroline Forbes, freshly turned, scared, and confused, blood dripping down her chin, her eyes moving from Elena to Bonnie, begging them to understand that she hadn't meant to kill the carnival worker, begging them to help her, to love her, to validate her existence. To tell her that she was still the friend they knew and loved. Caroline had come into her own as a vampire, so much so that vampirism was the best thing that had ever happened to Caroline Forbes. But that night, she'd been a deer in the headlights, just like poor Lily Bennett.

"Lils," Elena said now. "It's going to be okay."

The poor girl started crying.

Elena tried to keep smiling, but she just couldn't. Her heart was breaking. Lily was far too young for this. She wondered how Isabel had felt. Her birth mother. She must have lain on a doctor's table like this, her legs in stirrups, her jeans or cheerleading skirt folded on a chair, underwear tucked neatly beneath, just like Lily's clothes sat on the chair in the corner of the Gilbert Family Medical Practice exam room.

Elena thought of Summer, scared and confused, sitting in her tiny shoebox of an apartment in New York, huddled under her favorite purple blanket, too afraid of Damon's nineteenth century values (and Elena's desperate need for her children to succeed) to call her parents.

Elena thought of Summer just this morning, throwing up in the toilet as Elena held her hair.

"I'm not ready for this," Lily Bennett said, running her fingers through short hair, close cropped and kept natural. "Could you just check one more time?"

Elena nodded, grabbing petroleum jelly tube and the ultrasound wand. "This is going to be cold, hon. Can I pull down the sheet? And can you pull up your shirt a bit? Keep your boobs covered, I just need your abdomen."

The girl nodded. Her stomach, now bared to Elena, was heartbreakingly flat. But at least that was good. The earlier they'd caught this, the more options they had.

Elena gently and carefully pulled down the paper sheet, so that Lily's entire belly was exposed. "I'm just going to put this on your belly, okay, hon?"

The girl nodded. But she'd shut her eyes. Tears leaked out the corners of her eyes.

Elena rubbed the petroleum jelly on Lily's flat belly. "Do you want me to call your mom?"

Lily shook her head forcefully. "No! Promise me no!"

"What about your Aunt Bonnie?"

Lily dissolved in tears until she was full-on sobbing. "Elena, you have to help me. I can't do this. I can't do this."

Elena dropped the ultrasound wand on the table so she could grab Lily's hand. With her other hand she stroked the girl's forehead as she'd done so many times for her six children.

"Lily Bennett, you listen to me," Elena said in her best mom voice, the one she used when she was thinking about her own mother, her real mother. Whenever Elena was lost as a mother, whenever a child of hers was yelling or crying or in the kind of psychological pain that Lily was in right now—Elena wanted to run to the bathroom, turn on the shower, and sob. Because she felt so damned helpless. Elena did not function well when she let down someone that she loved. Or when she felt like she was going to let someone down. Sometimes she did end up in the master bathroom, the one Damon had designed to be so much bigger and fancier than her parents' bathroom had been—an almost exact replica of his en-suite bathroom in the Salvatore boarding house, complete with a glorious, delicious freestanding tub and really expensive tile, well really expensive everything because Damon had the tastes of the nineteenth century aristocrat he really was. Sometimes Elena turned on the shower, rushed under the hot water, sank to her knees in despair and helplessness, and sobbed. Hoping that the sound of the water rushing over her would hide her sobs from the seven other people in her family. But other times she just held her ground with her children, meeting their suffering gazes head-on. Even when she retreated to the shower, she eventually had to come out. And because she was Elena Gilbert, who died so many times but always came back, because she never gave up on anybody, and because she was stubborn as hell—Elena always tried. She always, always tried to save her children. So far, she hadn't lost them. And in the hardest moments—when their disrespect made her want to scream every venomous thing Damon had ever yelled at, well, a lot of people—or their sadness crushed her heart and hurt her to her bones in a way that even Klaus Mikaelson, or Ripper Stefan, had never done—Elena remember her mother. Miranda Gilbert. How kind she was. How she always listened to Elena. How she always had the best advice. How she was calm and quiet and smart and decent. She almost never lost her temper, but when she did you knew that you'd really fucked up.

In Elena Gilbert's darkest moments as a mother, she always, always conjured up Miranda Gilbert.

What would Miranda Gilbert do? She should make a t-shirt, or a line of wristbands.

"Lily," Elena whispered, still rubbing the girl's forehead. She remembered when Lily was born. She'd delivered this child, two months after giving birth to one of her own children, Gil. Oh fuck, this child was two months younger than Gil. A year older than Lucia. Four years younger than Joey. Five years younger than Summer. Fuck. As she leaned down to kiss Bonnie's cousin lightly on the forehead—a very unprofessional move, but so many of Elena's patients were like family to her. Because of how interbred the founding families were, many patients were actual family, though distant, perhaps cousins third or fourth removed. "Lily, sweetheart. I want you to look at me." When the girl kept her eyes shut tight, Elena took a deep breath, summoning her mother's unique brand of compassion and no-nonsense badassery. "Fine. Don't look at me. That's fine. Because _you_ are going to be fine. I promise you. You have options. If you're not ready to have a baby, that's okay. There's a clinic in Richmond. A friend from med school runs it. I will drive you there myself if you want me to. If you want to have the baby, but you're not ready to be a mother, that's fine. There are so many families out there who want a baby so badly, and they can't, because some women—"

Lily broke down crying now. Full on. Sobbing. Elena pulled her up into a hug and held on tight. Something clenched deep inside her. What if this was her own child on this table? Not Summer, that had already happened last week. Elena had forced herself into an almost zen-like state to do that particular examination. And at least Summer was an adult, with a college degree. What if this was Lucia? By the way, where was Lucia right this minute? Lucia didn't even have a boyfriend. She was surely a virgin, surely. But at her age, Elena wasn't. She lost her virginity to Matt at fifteen. Fifteen! Did she tell her mother that? She couldn't remember. No. She hadn't. She confessed all sorts of things to Miranda. They stayed up late and talked for hours sometimes, about Matt, how he had this whole future planned out for him and Elena, a future she couldn't wrap her head around, a small-town dream she didn't share. They talked about Bonnie, about how Elena was worried that Bonnie's dad was gone so often, that even with Grams being the most amazing grandmother in the world, sometimes Bonnie had to raise herself. They talked about Caroline, how infuriating Caroline had become once high school started, how hurt Elena was that her once sweet, silly, compassionate best friend had turned into a catty gossip.

They talked about the kind of life Elena wanted to have—back then she'd wanted to be a writer, maybe live in a loft apartment in Brooklyn with a sexy, mysterious guy who made her feel tingly in a way that Matt Donovan just didn't. Miranda told her about falling in love with Grayson, about how they'd always known each other, grown up together like Elena and Matt, but that they hadn't started dating, or even been friends, until college. Miranda had been shocked to sit down in the cafeteria at Whitmore (second semester of freshman year in college), turn to her right to smile at the cute boy at the next table, and then realize he wasn't some stranger, but actually a very hot version of the older Gilbert boy. Grayson was a few years older than her, and Jon a few years younger, so she never knew the Gilbert boys well. But it was a small town, and everyone knew everyone. And the Gilberts were a founding family after all, so everyone definitely knew who Grayson Gilbert was.

Grayson was a first year med student back then in that cafeteria, four years older than Miranda. Elena's mom was an English major. He was tall, dark, and handsome. And funny. And suave. He had the genteel manners of a man raised to be old fashioned Southern royalty, the kind of man Tyler's dad aspired to be, but never managed to hit the mark because his temper and fragile ego got in the way. They dated for a year. Then they broke up. But they got back together Miranda's senior year at Whitmore, which was also Grayson's final year of medical school. They were married when he was a first-year resident at Mystic Falls General.

They'd talked about boys so much. Miranda had even asked Elena once what she thought of Tyler Lockwood, when Tyler gave her a ride home one day and Miranda misinterpreted. (Elena did not think much of Tyler Lockwood until he became a werewolf and somehow the pain and indignity and fear of that experience made him into a nice guy—but even then there wasn't a hint of romance.) When Elena started dating Stefan, she wished so many times she could talk to her mother about this mysterious new boy at school. When she found out he was a vampire, she'd daydreamed about confessing this dark secret to her mother, and the even darker secret that his undead status made him all the more attractive to the supposedly perfect, pure Elena Gilbert. She'd longed for Miranda' advice (which probably would have been to dump the vampire, if not drive a stake into his heart).

When she'd fallen head over heels for Damon, when Elena had felt like she might get lost in the danger and passion and intense alive-ness the older Salvatore brother radiated, oh she _really_ wanted to talk to her mother then. She'd wanted Miranda's opinion of Damon, wanted to know what her mother thought, because as sticky as her relationship with Matt was, most of the time, at least she knew where Matt stood with her mother.

But in all those long talks, Miranda had never once so much as hinted that Elena was adopted, or that Uncle Jon of all people was her real dad. Elena had never once told Miranda that she'd had sex with Matt. In fact, at fifteen, Elena Gilbert had gone two towns over to get birth control pills from a doctor who wouldn't tattle on her to her dad.

Had Lily Bennett told her mother that she was having sex?

Elena'd always assumed that her kids would come to her with this kind of thing. And, indeed, Summer had. When she was sixteen, she'd had a steady boyfriend, and had asked to go on the pill, saying she wanted to be prepared just in case. Elena had examined her, just like she would any other patient, prescribed the birth control pills Summer asked for, and not mentioned it to Damon because she knew that his nineteenth century, sexist brain would explode. He'd go charging into the Salvatore School, intent on beating up the witch boyfriend.

Elena had thought she was so modern, so reasonable. She'd even made the same offer to Lucia last year, but her younger daughter had turned her down, promising there was no need for birth control.

"Lily," Elena said now. "Tell me how I can help you."

Lily was holding onto Elena for dear life. But her sobs were quieting. Her head on Elena's shoulder, as her tears soaked into Elena's blouse, the girl said, "I don't know what to do."

"That's fine."

Lily pulled away, smiling bravely as she tried to wipe the tears away. She took a deep, shaky breath. "What would you do, if you were me?"

Elena bit her lip and handed her a box of tissues. She'd honestly never considered this situation for herself, at that age. Summer had been a surprise, but Elena was twenty-five at the time, and married. It had been nerve-wracking, and inconvenient at hell considering that she was a first-year med student and she'd finally, finally gotten her life back on track after years of running from x, y, and z supernatural creatures and then spending half a decade in a coffin in a magical coma. That whole first pregnancy was a supernatural nightmare, what with visions and having to call Klaus Mikaelson of all people for help, but Summer was a welcome surprise. All she'd ever wanted was a family, and getting pregnant unexpectedly, it had been messy but also a dream. But twenty-five, or even Summer's twenty-two, it was so far from Lily's seventeen. A different reality.

Elena hadn't paid much mind to scenarios like this when she was a teenager, because with Matt she'd been so young and naive, it just hadn't occurred to her that birth control could fail. And after Matt, well, she'd dated vampires. And then she'd been a vampire herself, dating vampires. There was no safer sex than vampire sex—that is as long as you could trust that your partner wasn't going to bite you and kill you during sex. Which happened. A lot. Just not to Elena.

Lily blew her nose loudly. "It's my boyfriend's. He's a good guy. Gil knows him. He goes to the Mystic Falls High. But he's going to freak out. Like, full-on freakout."

Elena began to run the ultrasound wand along Lily's flat stomach. "There it is, and everything looks just right," she said. "Of course your boyfriend's going to freak out. You should have seen how freaked out Damon was when we found out we were having Summer. He was terrified he wasn't father material. And we were grownups."

Lily smirked. "Wasn't he like 200 years old or something? You'd think he was ready."

Elena laughed. It was refreshing to talk to someone in the community who knew who Damon really was. Everyone at the Salvatore School did, and Damon relished that. He liked to tell vampire stories like they were war stories, liked to be special. But there was more to it. To most of the world, Damon had to be his cover. A man born in 1987, who'd dropped out of college in the 2000s, bummed around the restaurant business, then moved back home to take care of his so-called teenage brother in that big old house in Mystic Falls. A man whose biggest scandal was the fact that he'd fallen for his brother's girl and started dating Elena when she was barely legal and he was twenty-three. It was hard for Damon to feel like a fraud, to have no choice but to lie about so much, deny so much, a century and a half that had shaped him, made him into the man he was. Elena knew Damon wouldn't be the love of her life if he'd never had those decades and decades of being undead. "He was 179 when Summer was born. But you know, it doesn't matter how old you are, and I think that Damon is the second oldest man to ever be a father. Klaus Mikaelson won the world record at 1000 or so. And, as I've heard it, Klaus threw a whole series of temper tantrums and just about destroyed New Orleans, when he got his news."

The girl laughed.

Elena grinned at her and then turned back to the ultrasound machine, looking for any cause for concern. "Whenever it is that you become a parent, you're not ready. I don't think there's ever been anybody in the whole history of the world who found out they were having a baby, and said, yeah, no problem, I'm totally cool. Even when you plan for the kid, you get nervous. Oh, god, the twins? We knew for a fact we'd have them because we actually had this vision, when Summer was a baby and the whole magic hotspot thing went down in Mystic Falls. You've heard about that?"

Lily nodded. "I'm kind of jealous, you know. There's all this awesome stuff that happened here, and you guys got to be all bad-ass, and now it's just boring."

Elena raised her eyebrows and was quiet for a minute because she didn't know what to say to such a blatantly idiotic statement. Which her own children had made many times. Particularly Summer and Joey, who were always chasing adventure. Finally Elena said, "I'm jealous of _your_ adolescence. I know it sounds exciting, what we went through, and sometimes it was. But most of the time it was just blood and mind-games and funerals. So, like I tell my kids, be grateful for the boring. And find a way to do something interesting with your life. Because running from evil vampires, or werewolves, or witches, or Travellers, or ... I can't even remember all of it. But it wasn't fun." What Elena didn't tell her that this was only a half-truth. Those scary, adrenaline-filled years had shaped her, changed her into a more interesting person. She'd felt more alive in death than she'd ever felt in her first human life. She wouldn't give it all back for a normal high school existence and then a life with Matt, or some other beautifully normal and kind man. She'd always choose Damon, all of him, including all the blood on his and her hands, because she would always choose a life of passion and adventure and danger, over normal. But that was not the advice to give to a seventeen year-old girl who'd already gotten herself into this particularly sticky situation.

Damon wasn't the only one pretending to be something he wasn't. Damon wasn't the only one who missed the darkness, some days at least.

"You're ten weeks along. So you have a little time, but you do need to make a choice soon. I want to see if I can the heartbeat," Elena said. "You're far along enough, I should be able to. And we want to make sure everything's okay. Sound good?"

The girl nodded. Elena flipped a switch. The healthy fetal heartbeat seemed to echo around the room. Like life was shouting at them. Like the tiny life inside this terrified girl was pounding, in perfect rhythm, trying to say something. I exist. I'm here. Pay attention to me.

Lily started sobbing.

#

Elena was ushering Lily Bennett out of the office, handing her a pamphlet with a list of things to do to take care of herself, another one from the abortion clinic about choices, and a bottle of prenatal vitamins she'd gotten from an insurance rep last week. "Take these regardless," Elena said to Lily, who smiled and then threw her arms around Elena in an impulsive hug, before practically running out the door.

"Was that Lily Bennett?"

Elena glanced around to see Summer sitting behind her desk, her bare feet propped up on the desk, all over Elena's papers. She looked so much like Elena at that age, with dark hair the same shade as Elena's and olive skin, except for Damon's blue eyes and her expression, which was all Summer. Even now, when Summer was all torn up inside about what to do about this unplanned pregnancy, her expression was so much more powerful than Elena had ever felt—so much more, hey-world-I'm-here, so-don't fuck with me. Elena sighed and took off her glasses, cleaning the smudges off with the bottom of her blouse. "Feet. Down."

Summer laughed and complied. Hair so wild and curly today, Elena wondered when was the last time that hair had seen a brush. "I had to get out of the house. Dad was coddling me like I'm freaking five years old."

Elena laughed. Damon had been making smoothies and cooking like crazy and discouraging Summer from going on jogs, even though he was not a freaking doctor and Elena kept telling him that Summer could jog all she wanted. He was also dropping not-so-subtle hints about what he thought Summer should do about "the predicament" and how he still had mornings off from the bar, and while he did need at least three mornings a week to write, if he was going to meet his publisher's deadline, he could potentially take a potential baby Tuesday and Thursday mornings, do the whole stay-at-home-dad-part-time-thing he'd done when their kids were little. He was driving Summer, and Elena, crazy. Joey was back at Columbia, but even he was complaining about "Dad being bananas." The younger kids didn't know about "the predicament" or Damon's insanity would be much worse, she was sure.

"Your father doesn't really have an off switch," Elena told her oldest now. "He also doesn't have a half-on-switch."

Summer rolled her eyes. Then her laughing expression darkened. "I talked to him."

"Who?"

"Darrell." The boyfriend. The sort of boyfriend who sounded much more like a friend with benefits type of person than a partner.

"He says he's not into this."

Elena frowned. "He said what?"

"He said this wasn't what he signed up for. If it's money I need, he'll pay child support. But that's it. He doesn't even want to see the kid, if I have it."

Elena practically ran behind the desk, pulled Summer up, and threw her arms around her child. Summer began to whimper, then cry. And now this self-possessed, bad-ass witch who sometimes intimidated Elena, even if she was prone to neurotics and melodrama, was crying like a child. Elena was hit with a million images of Summer over the years. Scraped knees. First tooth. First steps. First day of kindergarten at the Salvatore School.

No. No. No. Summer wasn't ready for this. Elena wasn't ready for this. Summer was still little. She was still a child. She was still Elena's child. It didn't matter that Summer was her oldest, that she was brilliant at babysitting the twins, that she'd taught them how to control their accidental magic, that she could talk Hope Mikaelson down from a rant. That she'd once gone head to head with Klaus, screaming in his face when he'd said something rude to Caroline. (Elena'd almost had a heart attack, but thankfully Summer survived her foolishness because the man who'd survived a millennium had laughed at the sixteen year-old in front of him, like this was just the delightful fun he'd needed in his day. He'd told Damon and Elena that he was impressed with their genes and whatever parenting they'd done to produce such a firecracker.)

Summer was a wonder. Summer was a force to be reckoned with. But she was still a child. And, as much as Elena had insisted to Damon that he was stupid to get hung up on the word "grandfather," Elena was freaking hung up on that word. Along with the corresponding "grandmother." She was not old enough to be a mother of two college students and one recent college graduate. The fact that Summer had a studio apartment in New York and a job, that Elena was a mother of a person who had a real job (even if it was an internship, Summer was doing actual work for a fancy Manhattan graphic design studio)—all of that was surreal. Elena tried to tell herself that she was forty-eight, that it was fine to feel old because she was indeed middle-aged. That getting older was a triumph. She'd never wanted to die young and leave behind a beautiful corpse.

Thinking of all the kids she'd grown up with who hadn't made it to thirty—Elena knew she was lucky to have this problem. Lucky to grapple with the indignities of middle-age, and now the beginnings of menopause with the occasional hot flash or hormonal flare. She was lucky to be alive to listen to Damon grumble about his stupid knee and the stupid battle in the Civil War when he'd twisted it. His latest thing was that it would be fun to go to the V.A. and ask them to pay for surgery, because he was a veteran, and then to tell them in detail about the smell of canon smoke in 1863. He was thinking of actually doing this, but bringing Tommy along to compel everyone so they'd never breathe a word about the unbelievable things coming out of Damon's mind. Because, far too often, Damon was not quite fifteen.

Dr. Thomas Fell—the young man who shared her practice and was Meredith's second cousin and Tommy's direct descendent—had gone home early for the day. Thomas, barely out of his residency, was young or foolish enough to think his status as a Founder was really interesting. So he'd left work to attend some arcane Founder's event. Elena put up the "Doctor will be back soon" sign on her office's main door, and dragged Summer out into the autumn sunshine. "You've probably got an appetite by now?" she asked her daughter. "Cheese fries."

But Summer shook her head. "Is it bad that morning sickness isn't always in the morning?"

Elena grabbed her little one's hand and began explaining that this was completely normal. She was grateful that she'd gone to medical school rather than pursue an English degree, or something else that would not be helpful in the most practical of ways, right now. Elena got Summer into her SUV and drove until they were far out of town. Not driving anywhere in particular.

They listened to music and talked about nothing in particular. When she saw signs for a nearby state park, Elena turned into the parking lot. She dragged Summer onto a hiking trail, knowing that exercise would be good for her, for her body and her soul.

They were a mile into the mostly flat hike when Elena turned to her daughter and said, "Screw him. If Darrell doesn't want in on this, it doesn't matter. If you want the baby, we'll help you. If you don't, I'll take you to the clinic in Richmond. Today. Tomorrow. Anytime you want. If you want to put it up for adoption, I have a friend who can help with that too. And that can be a wonderful option, a wonderful gift. Look what Isabel did, with me. Giving me up, it was the best thing, for her, for Jon definitely, for my real parents, for me."

Summer started crying. And now she'd sunk to her knees.

Elena knelt down, drew her child close to her chest, trying to envelope Summer, body and soul. "What's wrong, love?"

Summer sobbed and blubbered. Then she took a deep shuddery breath and wiped her noes on her sweatshirt. Elena forced herself to not chastise Summer for being gross. "Mom, would you be mad if I kept the baby?"

Elena's eyes widened. She held onto her baby. "Why would you say that?"

"You keep talking about options. You gave me all the information about the clinic. And I heard you and Dad yelling about it last night. You guys think you can just turn on music loud and we won't hear, but everybody can hear you fighting. You're just lucky that I was the only kid upstairs, or you'd have a whole lot to explain to the little ones."

Elena laughed and sat down in the dirt so she could look at Summer, really look at her. She was getting her khakis filthy, but she couldn't worry about something so tiny. "Oh, love, I just wanted you to decide."

Summer frowned. "But I don't know, not really, and you, well, you know everything about being pregnant, having kids. You should know what to do. You should be the one to tell me. Not Dad. He's an idiot. I mean, he's a guy. He doesn't really get it."

Elena laughed. But she couldn't help thinking about how Summer had told Damon first. Even though Joey was the one driving, the one who'd gone into the bar to break the news to Damon. She'd felt hurt about that whole situation, that they went to their father instead of her. But she'd told herself that Joey had always been closest to his father, that it made sense. Their oldest son was so Damon-freaking-Salvatore it wasn't funny.

"You did tell him first," Elena said now, feeling stupid. This burst of jealousy was ridiculous and unproductive. "You could have made Joey come to me."

Summer nodded. "Mom," she said, her voice so small, a child's voice. "I was afraid of what Dad would do to Darrell, but you know, we were a bunch of states away, so I knew that you, or Aunt Bonnie, or even Aunt Caroline could stop him murdering my boyfriend, my whatever Darrell is." Elena laughed. Summer's analysis of the situation was not wrong. "But you, I just knew that you wanted all this other stuff for me. You always talk about the life you couldn't have, all the running from vampires and being stuck in a coffin. I mean, you were in a magical coma when you were my age."

Elena burst out laughing. "I was, but I don't ... I don't quite understand what you're saying."

"I didn't want to disappoint you, Mom. Especially when there were so many people who had to die in order for _me_ to be here. I mean, you and Dad, you kind of won the lottery, not dying, at least not in a permanent. And then getting this second chance. At being human. Don't you think? It's like one in a billion."

Elena nodded, gulping.

"Uncle Stefan literally sacrificed himself to save Dad. And you. So he died for me. I never would have been born, and didn't he say something about how he wanted you guys to get to have a life? Children?"

Elena kissed her daughter on the forehead, like she had so many times, to soothe away nightmares and bruises and encounters with mean kids in Mystic Falls who often had a weird prejudice against anyone who went to the Salvatore School, even though they didn't know that the supernatural was real, that the kids at the school were all powerful witches. No, those shitty townie kids just figured out that there was something different about Elena's children, and the other kids at Caroline and Ric's school. Summer had spent a whole summer having fits of sadness and inadequacy, until Joey found out that the trouble was one particular girl, Lindsay Fell's daughter, and he'd set her hair on fire. Which had made it necessary for Caroline to compel an awful lot of people. Care had been furious, had given Joey such a long lecture Joey had begged his aunt's forgiveness. But he'd stopped the bully.

"Summer Gilbert Salvatore," Elena said. "You could never disappoint me."

"But this internship. I mean, I could finish it, no problem. It's up at Christmas anyway. Though I do have a really good chance of being hired on. Or if not there, another firm."

"You can still do that."

Summer laughed. "No. Maybe I could make it work during the pregnancy. But afterwards, what am I going to do? Be a single mom in Manhattan? Do you have any idea what childcare runs there? I called a couple preschools, and it's insane."

Elena raised her eyebrows. She didn't know the exact figures, but she could imagine they were astronomical. "Love, you know I don't like to rely on it, but this is exactly the sort of time when your dad being a multi-millionaire with a bunch of shady off-shore accounts does come in handy."

Summer laughed. "He'd do that?"

"In a heartbeat."

But her daughter shook her head. "Even so. I'd be all alone. Darrell's not going to change his mind. My friends up there. They're all busy. Joey, I mean I know he'd help, but he's got school."

"So what do you want to do?" Elena asked.

Summer took a deep, shuddery breath. "I talked to Aunt Caroline, and she thinks I could set up my own design business, just run it out of the house, or rent a space in town. Or maybe there's a space she has. Do you know she owns a building next to the Grill?"

Elena didn't know that, but somehow it didn't surprise her that Caroline was making real estate investments in town. Her best friend was nothing if not thorough. And she kept talking about wanting to keep her toes in Mystic Falls. "So, what are you saying, Summer?"

Her child took a deep breath and said, "I want to keep the baby. I want to move home. For now at least. I figure my old room is open?" Elena grinned and nodded. She felt a million butterflies settling. She hadn't known how much she'd wanted this outcome until Summer started to outline it, right now. As much as she'd given the modern woman's talk about options, and as much as she'd pushed back on Damon's pushiness and completely outdated mental framework when it came to just about anything to do with young women—Elena had been suspecting from the beginning that Summer wanted to keep the baby. Her oldest child was innately thorough and neurotic, and Elena knew that Summer wanted to make sure she weighed every option ten times. Elena also knew that Damon's incredibly unsubtle hints were just making their daughter mad. Making her push back to match his stubbornness with her own.

Elena's greatest fear hadn't been an abortion, because if that was what Summer chose, she could help her through it. She felt confident in that. Her greatest fear had been that she'd want to keep the baby, but go back to New York. The idea of Elena's baby being a single mother in Manhattan, living in that shoebox apartment, or even someplace nicer because Damon would probably try to buy her a penthouse—in Elena's eyes it was a life ten times darker and sadder than Summer was envisioning. Because Elena knew how hard it was to have a baby in the best circumstances. She knew how exhausted she'd been when Summer was a baby, even after the magic hotspot had been sealed. She and Damon and Summer had been a normal family then. But even with a supportive partner, and friends and family close by, motherhood was exhausting. It drained you in a way you could never predict. Sometimes the hormones alone would send Elena into a crying jag. Motherhood could be a dark hole surrounded by beauty.

But this plan. Summer moving back into her old room. Starting up a business with Caroline's help. This could work.

"Aunt Caroline even knows some rich vampires who need websites for their businesses," Summer was saying.

"How very twenty-first century of them." Elena laughed, feeling unexpectedly free and unencumbered. "You know, Summer, we couldn't have picked a better day for a hike." She gestured all around them, at the rich, multi-colored Fall leaves, and the blue sky. "And, kiddo. I think this sounds perfect."

"Really?"

Elena hugged her. "Your dad is going to be on cloud nine. And you know you're going to have to let him babysit on Tuesday and Thursday mornings."

Summer laughed. "Actually, it would really help. I almost don't want to tell him, he's been such an ass."

Elena shrugged. "It comes from love though. And, oh god, Damon is so good with babies, it's weird. Anytime an old friend would come to town, and we had a child under two, which was very frequent for so long—"

Summer laughed. "I remember the first time Aunt Caroline brought Klaus to the house. Klaus kept talking about how weird it was that Dad was such a dad or something. You guys had a big fight, you and Dad were sooo mad at Aunt Care, and wouldn't let Klaus in, so we grilled in the backyard, do you remember." Elena nodded. She'd wanted to murder Caroline that day. For even suggesting that Klaus Mikaelson be invited into her house where she lived with so many children. And for having the audacity to bring him over for dinner without mentioning that this was the "new boyfriend" who was tagging along with her. Caroline and Klaus had had a fling when Summer was a baby, but it had exploded like most vampire relationships did. And then Elena had suspected that they slept together from time to time, but she'd been sure nothing would come of it. Then, one day, when Elena was six months pregnant with Gil, and both she and Caroline were biologically thirty, Caroline decided it was time to leave Mystic Falls. People in town were starting to ask too many questions about her perfect skin, wondering if she'd found the fountain of youth. She'd had to compel three people that very week to shut up, even though they were just throwing compliments at her for looking so good for her age. Elena knew that the age thing, these annoying questions, it was just a nuisance now. But soon there would be real suspicion, especially among Council members. Caroline was existing in her hometown on borrowed time. Stefan had said it was necessary to reinvent himself every five years. So, before Gil was born, when Caroline's own daughters were only nine, the blond vampire hopped on a plane for Europe. She ran into Klaus in Barcelona, and didn't bother to tell Damon or Elena who this new guy was, until they showed up at the Gilbert-Salvatore house for family dinner. Elena had seen red that day, almost literally. She had four children in the house. When they answered the door, Lucia was on her hip, and Gil was sitting on Damon's shoulders. Seeing the most dangerous creature in the world standing on their threshold beside Caroline, grinning in such a self-satisfied way, only separated from their precious littles ones by a magic barrier—it was not a good surprise.

"Oh, I remember," Elena said. "I wanted to turn them away completely. Somehow, I don't even know why, your father took pity on Caroline. He, well you know Dad. He has a soft spot for vampires in need."

Summer laughed. "I bet he's wishing I'd dated that vampire I met in New York last year." Elena cocked her head to the side, wondering at the notion. And understanding the implication. Dating vampires, it's why she hadn't had to worry about birth control, from junior year through college. "But anyway," her daughter was going on. "You were grilling that night, because Dad had Lucia strapped to his chest in that baby carrier thing. Because she was being really fussy and he was the only one who could calm her down. She was like seven months old and teething I think." Elena nodded. She remembered vividly. "Dad is magic with babies sometimes."

"He is. Weirdly enough, I think it's the vampire thing. He's very tuned into the human body. He doesn't have the senses he used to. But he spent so long at the mercy of his body, the hunger. But also listening to heartbeats."

"Really?"

Elena nodded. "Your dad, he seems to know how to quiet his own body, how to rock a child to sleep so the child will just drift off. When one of you was teething, or had an earache, anything that meant you were in pain and didn't know what to do because you were tiny, Damon was like magic." Squeezing Summer's hand, she said, "He would be a huge help to you on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Basically anytime he could help, I'd take it if I were you. Though when the kid's older, you do have to realize that he will be a terrible influence as well. Worse than any other grandfather in the history of grandfathers."

Summer laughed. "So you're really okay with this? Because all your talk—"

"Summer, love, I wanted you to make the decision for yourself. But if you think you can do this, you can do this. And talk to Aunt Caroline. She was still in college when the twins were born. And she was just as surprised as you were, more I'm sure. I wasn't around then. I was in that magical coma." They both laughed. "But the reason I've been talking ... look, you have years and years to be a mother. To be a real grownup ... no, don't give me that, Summer Salvatore, there's a difference between having a fun internship in New York, going out with your friends clubbing, et cetera ... and having a family."

Summer rolled her eyes, but nodded. "Yes, ma'am," she said. Her face serious now. "I know, Mom. I know this is going to be different. But every day, it's like I can feel him. More and more."

Elena frowned. "Him?" It was way, way too early to know the sex.

"It's a boy. I'm sure of it."

"Well, we'll see at twenty weeks when we do the—"

"Mom! I'm a witch. And, not to brag, but I'm a really powerful witch. I don't need an ultrasound to prove anything."

Elena sighed and started to feel nervous again, wondering about the magical implications of this pregnancy. Thinking again about the two girls from the Salvatore School, both powerful witches, whose pregnancies she'd confirmed in the last week. Thinking of Bonnie's growing concern, the rumors she was hearing from witches all over the world. That this was like 2032, but different. Because in 2032, nothing had happened, other than more witch babies born than in an average year. Now, eight years later, the babies were starting again, and the whole world seemed to be rippling with magic. Elena could feel it, sometimes. And Damon said he could feel it every minute, growing stronger. He was much more practiced at listening for the signs of magic and nature speaking to him, because decades ago he'd begged Bonnie to train him in magic, hoping latent witch powers were hiding in his soul, some innate talent that just hadn't kicked in when he was human the first time. Damon twenty years ago had been desperate to be special.

Now, her husband finally seemed content to be himself. To be human. He finally seemed to understand that just being Damon Salvatore was enough. He didn't need a speck of magic to be special.

"Fine," she told Summer. "Tell me more about how you're feeling."

Summer took a deep breath and said, "Every day, it's like I can feel him, my baby, getting a tiny bit bigger, like I can actually feel him growing physically. But it's also like he's more real to me. Like he's so much a part of me. Like maybe he's always been a part of me, my destiny or something, and I just didn't know until he arrived inside me. Mom, _I want him_. I want this baby. But I can't do it by myself. Even if Darrell said he was all in, I'd need you. And Dad. And I know Dad wants me to the keep the baby. But, really, as much as he's great. He's not you. I can't do this without my mother."

Elena started crying. She couldn't stop, as she pulled her daughter towards her, but she smiled through the tears. "Of course, love, of course. You'll move back into your old room. Well, you're already there, but I'll send your dad and Joey up to get all your things. We can get you out of your lease, or sublet, or whatever it is. And tell Darrell that we don't need his money. If he wants to be part of the baby's life, now, next year, in ten years, you should let him. And tell him that too. But we don't need his money, and if he's going to act like this, you don't need the drama. You can live with us as long as you want. I'll talk to Aunt Caroline about the business idea. I think it sounds smart. But do be careful about the vampire clients."

Summer rolled her eyes. "Any vampire who needs a website can't be that dangerous."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that. But anyway, my love, you can stay with us as long as you want." Elena's head was brimming with the possibilities of having her daughter back home. The house had been getting too big lately. Too many empty spaces. Especially with Lucia being such a quiet teenager. The idea of Summer sitting at the kitchen table, eating Frosted Flakes despite Elena's best efforts to make oatmeal tasty, talking to Elena about her day, while Damon plopped the baby into a highchair and started feeding him that really good homemade baby food he'd perfected by the time the twins were eating solid foods—that idea was magic. Lucia running downstairs, late for school, begging her older sister to help her with her hair. Zoe and Phoebe making way too much noise as they ran around the house, looking for their backpacks and god knows what else. Elena loved her home when it was a little crazy. And this, this would be a little crazy.

A grandchild. Shit. Damon was right, it was that one word that made this icky. Elena Gilbert was way too young and hot to be a grandmother. They'd have to find some name for her that didn't make her sound ancient. But she pushed aside her vanity as she grabbed her daughter's hand and pulled Summer to her feet. "We are going to be great at this," she said. "Don't worry."

"I'm not."

Elena gave her a hard look. "Of course you're worried. You'd be stupid to not be worried. It's another life you're going to be responsible for. ... Summer, I'm serious, this is a big deal, but you can do it. If you're sure?"

Summer smiled. "I'm sure. And you know what, I'm finally not queasy. Maybe those cheese fries? But can we get Dad to make them himself? Georgie's just aren't as good."

"Deal."

"Is it weird that I'm thinking they would be really awesome if they had French dressing on them?"

Elena giggled. "No, my love. It's totally normal."

When they made it back to the car, Elena grinned at her daughter. "You know, I'm kind of excited about this little mistake of yours."

Summer giggled. "Really?"

"Yeah. I think it's going to be epic. But seriously, I'm not going to be called Grandma or Granny or anything wretched like that."

**#**

**December 2040**

**Mystic Falls, Virginia**

**The Gilbert-Salvatore house**

As he waited for the prime rib roast to cook to a perfect medium rare, Damon was trying to keep Zoe and Phoebe occupied with a rousing game of Clue. They were spread out on the living room floor. His two littlest girls stretched out on their stomachs, propped up on their elbows. Fervently studying their cards, trying to sneak peeks at each other's cards, accusing each other of cheating every other moment. Meanwhile, Lucia and Gil were in a mock-fight with Joey, claiming that witchcraft was useless and that they were much more powerful than he was because they didn't rely on a stupid little crutch like magic to get through their days. The middle Salvatore kids were on the floor too—Gil lounging against a bean bag, Lucia doing some kind of yoga pose beside her favorite brother. Joey lay on the couch in front of them, his head on his boyfriend's lap. Glenn was spending yet another holiday with Damon's family. Damon was wondering if the two were going to announce wedding plans sometime soon. Glenn seemed to be ignoring the witch-non-witch debate. As a civilian, he seemed to not care either way. He'd brought a guitar along and was absently strumming.

"Hey Mr. S.!" he called out. "You got a request?"

Damon grinned. "Kiddo, just call me Damon, okay? I've told you ten times."

Glenn nodded. "You got it. Damon, give me a request for a song."

"You know Freebird?"

Laughing, the boy said, "You really are old."

"If you don't know the song—"

"I know it. I'm just saying, you're old."

Damon laughed, loudly and heartily. "You know I'm a lot older than Freebird, right?"

"Of course I do," Glenn said. Joey had long ago divulged their secrets to his boyfriend. When he confessed his son to Damon, this transgression because the kids were not to tell the truth to anybody, that was when Damon knew that this particular boyfriend wasn't just a kid to screw around with. Joey was in love with the boy.

Yes, wedding bells were coming, sooner or later. Unless Joey and Glenn were so twenty-first century that they didn't believe in the institution of marriage. Whatever, he was just glad that his boy had found someone to love who a) loved him back, b) wasn't a vampire, and c) wasn't a psychopath.

Damon glanced at the other couch. Summer was huddling under a blanket, her head on her mother's shoulder. They were deep in some emotional conversation. Summer was teary about everything these days. She went back and forth between being insanely excited about this new phase in her life and freaking out and clinging to Elena. His oldest baby might actually be crying right now. She was four and a half months pregnant now, and Elena had just confirmed that Summer's witchy insight had been correct. She was having a little boy. A little boy to call him, not Grandpa but, something. Damon and Elena still hadn't decided which terms were the least terrifying and offensive to their vanity. Because Elena was just as vain as Damon was, excited about the idea of a baby, and yet sickened by the idea of it being an actual grandbaby.

Yeah, Summer looked like she was crying about something. This was going to be a fun Christmas dinner. Good thing Caroline was bringing Klaus with her, because he always made things better. Sighing and turning back to Glenn, Damon said, "Okay, since you're so aware of my ancient-ness and you're going to be a dick about it, let's go truly old school. The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

Glenn got a fit of the giggles. Joey broke free of the idiotic mock-fight for a minute to stare at Damon with open-mouthed horror. "Dad, nobody, and I mean nobody—" Glenn began to play the first chords. "Dad, stop him please."

But Damon just grinned. It was so damned loud in his living room. He missed this. This cacophony of sounds. Sure, the twins were loud enough, and sometimes Lucia bickered with them something fierce. But having all six kids home and in the same room. A fire in the fireplace. All their opinions just ricocheting around the room.

But stranger than the sounds, there was something else, this feeling. Like a warm breeze that rushed back and forth, tumbling through his hair, warming up every inch of his body. Damon closed his eyes for a moment, stretching his mind out—yes, there was the bubbling magic that Joey and Summer kept talking about, that Bonnie and the witch teachers at the Salvatore School had confirmed as a real thing. Magic wasn't out of balance, exactly, but there was more magic on the surface of the world than there should be. Magic felt like life to Damon. And Damon could feel the life bubbling up from the very earth beneath them, like it was the lifeblood of the universe. And blood, well blood was something he understood.

But there was something more. He could feel love in this house, which was embarrassingly corny even to think inside his head. But this wasn't just him being corny. No, he could actually feel his family, here, their minds or souls or whatever. He could see them and hear them, obviously. But he also knew they were here whether he saw them or heard them or got told of their existence by any of his regular five senses. He could almost picture this network of feelings and love going from person to person, from soul to soul, and all of the connections travelling from them to him. Intertwined in conversation, and laughter, and kicking and screaming. Damon could feel love like it was something tangible. And this palpable sensing of corny love, it was new to him. It hadn't happened until the magic from the hotspot started doing weird witch stuff a couple months ago. And when he'd hung his head and admitted this weird intuition to Bonnie, she'd said he could calm down, that he wasn't crazy. She knew what he was talking about it, but it was new to her too.

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," Glenn started singing. "He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored." He actually knew the words, past the first line. Such a weird kid.

Joey groaned. "Babe, you know I love you. But I will freaking fry your brain with my mind if you keep that up."

Glenn laughed as he continued to sing.

"Daddy!" Zoe was saying. "It's your turn."

Damon glanced at his sheet and cards. He rolled the dice and his piece made it to the library. "Colonel Mustard, in the library, with the lead pipe." Damon knew from experience that a lead pipe was a handy weapon to have. With perfect aim and vamp muscle, you could throw such a pipe and take a vamp's head clean off. Same for a wolf or a hybrid, for that matter.

It was Zoe's turn to show her dad a card. She had the lead pipe. Damn.

"He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on, His truth is marching—" Glenn was still at it.

But in one swift motion, Joey sat up. Damon's son was on Glenn's lap, straddling his boyfriend's legs. He tried to pry the guitar out of Glenn's hands, but the kid was surprisingly strong. After a minute of struggle, Joey grinned, waved his right hand with a flourish, and sent the guitar levitating. Then the instrument was full-on flying out of the room.

"Babe," Glenn breathed. "That display of power is so damned sexy, however, I wasn't done." But before he could go on singing the truly annoying tune that Damon never should have suggested, Joey kissed him. Full on the lips.

And then Glenn was wrapping his arms around Damon's oldest son, and Gil was cat-calling, and the twins were squealing with delight, or surprise or something, at the impromptu make-out session.

Damon just collapsed in laughter. He couldn't write this if he tried. His new book had a couple chapters at the end about his kids. He wondered if he could slip this scene in. He was also wondering what his kids were going to say about those chapters, because for the first time ever he was writing about them, and he was planning on showing them everything, getting their permission. They would probably censor the hell out of him.

In the midst of the chaos, the front door opened. Suddenly people were barging in, not caring at all that it might be nice to knock and be polite. Sajen and Bonnie and their four children. Their twins and their twelve year-old ran straight for Zoe and Phoebe, and soon the five girls were deep into some kind of top-secret, whispering conversation. Joey and Glenn came up for air, thank god, as Emily, who was Lucia's age, made a beeline for Gil and Lucia. She started talking excitedly about something that was happening at the Salvatore School. Lucia, Gil, and even Joey and Glenn leaned in, like Emily's news was a juicy piece of gossip. Emily was a boarding school student at the Salvatore. After a moment, Summer jumped up off the couch and joined the rest of the older kids.

Damon wandered into the kitchen, and found Sajen poking his head into the oven. "Is my cooking not up to your standards?" he asked his friend. Grinning.

"It looks great," Sajen said. "We brought green beans and escargot."

Elena laughed as she opened a bottle of wine. "Everybody drinking tonight?" she asked.

"Yes, please," Bonnie said. "That car ride. It was hell. I swear, the next time we do this, we need two cars. And I'll drive myself separately. Or maybe we could just ship the kids down, like packages."

Sajen sighed. "It was awful. The twins were wired like they were electric or something. And Sheila, what was it that happened, hon?" Sheila was the twelve year-old.

Bonnie rolled her eyes. "She had a vision during class, she saw the teacher slicing her hand with some scissors, and she freaked out. I mean, anything like that that happens when you're supposed to be a normal kid in public school."

"Around civilians," Damon said.

"Exactly. But then, later that day, it happened. Her vision came true. And the teacher needed stitches. And now she feels like she's responsible or something, because she didn't tell the teacher."

"Oh, poor thing," Elena said. "Like she would have been able to stop it, or make any teacher there believe in the supernatural."

Sajen nodded. "It takes a lot. I mean, I didn't even believe after I'd seen it. It's just so, unbelievable."

Damon laughed, thinking about the first time Katherine had shown her true face to him. His shock. And his excitement. How the world just opened up to him. There was his life before he knew that the supernatural existed. And then there was his life after. Even becoming a vampire wasn't as big a threshold as just having that knowledge. Becoming a vampire had changed how he experienced the world. But knowing the truth—that had changed the world itself.

"How's Summer doing?" Bonnie asked.

"She's good," Elena said. "Super hormonal, she's driving all her siblings a little crazy. Joey's turned way overprotective and wants to take the next semester off to come home and help."

"That's not happening," Damon said as he began mashing the potatoes. "I had a long talk with him last night. It's his senior year, and he needs to stop screwing around or he's not going to graduate."

"I know," Elena said. "By the way, do you have any idea what he's planning to with his degree?"

Damon shook his head.

"What's he studying?" Sajen asked.

"European history with a minor in anthropology," Damon said, rolling his eyes. "I told him with a degree like that, he'd basically have to teach or go to grad school. And he hates classrooms, so I don't know why he'd want to do either. He says it doesn't matter because, according to him, he is independently wealthy."

Bonnie broke out laughing. "Well, you guys are rich."

Damon waggled his eyebrows at his old friend. "_I _am obscenely rich. _I_ am independently wealthy. Elena here, she declared herself not to be, she doesn't want any of it."

Elena laughed and poured herself and Damon another glass of wine. "I don't. I work for a living. There's absolutely no need to dip into the Salvatore stash."

"So, my wife has a moral stick up her butt. I work for a living too, thank you very much, thanks to my wife having that moral stick up her butt. And Joey mooches off me. He'll take what I give him, and I'm not going to just give him oodles of cash. Because, and this may be hard to believe." Damon grinned and held his hands up in a gesture of mock surprise. "I know the kind of trouble you get into when you have too much money, and too much time on your hands. And that kid, I mean I bailed his ass out of jail just last week."

"What?" Elena snapped.

Fuck.

Luckily, Damon was saved by a knock at the door. Then the door was flying open and Caroline Forbes was whooshing into the kitchen. "Ooh, lots of wine. Goody. But, Salvatores, somebody has to invite Klaus into the house." Damon groaned. He'd forgotten about the Original being invited for Christmas dinner.

He looked at Elena. She shrugged. At this point, Klaus Mikaelson was the least of their problems. "Fine," Elena said. Caroline grinned and hugged Elena tightly, then hugged Bonnie and started talking a mile a minute about her plans for the school this year. And her plans for Summer's new business. As usual, Caroline was ten steps ahead of everyone else.

Damon wandered through the living room, noticing that Summer looked authentically happy hanging out with the other kids. She was sitting next to Joey, who had one arm around her and one arm around Glenn. Joey was telling a story about some wild party at Columbia; as Damon breezed by the kids, he couldn't help feeling jealous. That party sounded like a blast. But it also sounded like Joey and Glenn had been on some kind of psychedelics, so he was going to have to have a talk with his son about moderation. That was a laugh. Damon Salvatore, preaching moderation. Damon Salvatore, shaping the youth of America, one heart-to-heart at a time.

He hadn't gotten to the door when Lizzie and Josie Saltzman were running past Klaus, who was standing at the threshold with a bemused expression on his face. There was a young man with him, and Lizzie was holding his hand. "Hey Uncle Damon," Lizzie said, "Have you met my fiancé?"

Damon had not. He felt like the world was spinning as he shook the kid's hand. Not really a kid, he looked about thirty, which would make sense. The twins were in their late twenties. But all these changes. All these kids growing up. Now Ric was brushing past the Original as well, clapping Damon on the shoulder. "Merry Christmas, brother," he said. "Caroline told me I had to bring yams. Do you think anybody actually likes yams?"

Damon shook his head. "What's this with a fiancé? When did that happen?"

Ric sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Completely gray now. "Last week. I guess he's okay."

"Why can't they just stand still?" Damon asked.

"Have I mentioned how lovely it would be to stand _inside_ the house and not _outside_ the house?" Klaus yelled.

Damon ignored him. "I mean, it's like they're insisting that they're not kids anymore, and they're just going to—"

Ric started laughing.

"What?"

"So you're flipping out?"

"I am not flipping out."

"It's really quite rude to leave a guest out in the cold," Klaus said, his voice icy.

Damon stared down the Original vampire. "Do you promise to not eat anyone?"

Klaus threw a hand over his heart in mock dismay. "I would never!"

"Fine, you can come in," Damon growled. As the ancient man crossed the threshold, Damon sent a wish out into the universe. Please don't let this be a mistake.

Klaus made a beeline for the kitchen, and Caroline. Damon glanced back at Ric and put on his best breezy, devil-may-care smile. "I'm fine. Totally, completely, one hundred percent fine. Summer's healthy, the baby's healthy. My wife being a doctor is coming in handy." Rick nodded, looking far too kind. Damon rolled his eyes. "It's been a little chaotic, having her home because she's like this emotional timebomb, and she keeps freaking out at the least thing, and fighting with Lucia, which is kind of hilarious. But you know me, I like chaos. I thrive in chaos."

Ric raised his brows. "You do like chaos. I also know you're scared out of your mind."

Damon nodded. It was a small nod. But it was there, an almost insignificant acknowledgement that his friend was right, that he was letting Ric know that he was right. Damon smiled tightly as he said, "Fine. Whatever. Come on, man, let's get you a drink."

"Okay, _grandpa_."

Damon slapped a hand over his friend's mouth. "We are not using that word." But he laughed. He had to laugh. He threw an arm over Ric's shoulders and led him into the crowded kitchen.


	5. Chapter 5

Thanks to everyone who's reading, following and reviewing! I'm so glad you guys are enjoying this, and I'm having a lot of fun writing. Hope everyone is staying safe and well.

Cheers,

Norah

...

**Mystic Falls, Virginia**

**March 2041**

Damon padded downstairs not long after dawn. The house was so quiet it felt like the absence of sound was magical. He liked the insanity of his family all together, the noise, the twins running up and down the stairs. Up and down, up and down, until the monotony of their footsteps drove him to the brink of insanity, but also reminded him that he was alive, that by some miracle or fluke of the universe Damon Salvatore was even loved.

He'd always hated morning people, but lately he adored mornings like this. Mornings when he could think, or not think. When he could be alone, be mellow, read the newspaper (a pastime only enjoyed by old men in this absurdly modern era of infinite devices). The older he got, and the further he descended into being fully human, the more Damon craved these moments. Calm. A purity of thought. Moments when he didn't have to be a father or a husband, a business owner or a councilman. Moments when he was Damon, and Damon alone. Oddly enough, these moments of utter peace reminded him, a lot, of his vampire days. Damon had spent decades at a time, over a century added up, without real companionship. Back then, in the pre-Elena eras, his time was largely his own. Lonely, bloody, supremely unethical decades, but still there was something that he missed. A vampire's life contained a peace unknown to family men.

Sunlight was just beginning to creep in through the windows as he snuck into the kitchen, trying not to wake anybody else up. But Summer was already at the kitchen table, eating a gigantic bowl of ice cream. Her ironic, hipster Scooby Doo sweatshirt barely contained her belly, which she rubbed absently while shoveling ice cream into her mouth with the other hand. She was at the stage in her pregnancy where her body looked like it was stretched far past its capacity, and her belly looked like an alien was inside it.

"Hey kiddo," he said, smiling, trying not to show that he was worried about her, or that it was hard to see her this way. "Can't sleep?"

His daughter shrugged. Her curly hair was extra frizzy this morning. It looked like it hadn't seen a comb in quite some time. Summer never wore sweats, even to bed, and was always careful about her appearance to an annoying degree. Damon hoped she wasn't descending into some kind of existential slump. She'd been depressed before, not often, but when it happened the malaise lingered. That bad year when she was eight, and her magic had gone haywire. The first few months of her freshman year of high school, when a group of bitchy, meddlesome girls at the Salvatore School had started teasing Summer and Joey for being freaks. Unnatural witches, given that they were born not to witches but to ex-vampires. But both times, she'd rallied. She'd always rallied. Summer was neurotic, but she wasn't fragile.

But this. This was permanent. His baby girl was going to have to be a mother. Maybe he'd been crazy to think Summer could do this.

Damon felt a primal instinct, rising up from deep inside his reptilian brain, screaming at him. He should have protected his daughter. He should be hitting someone right now. That freaking boy who'd abandoned her. And hitting himself, for failing his daughter. This was plain old incompetence on his part, not putting the fear of vampires into each and every one of his daughter's suitors.

He took a deep breath, stuffed down the primal anger, and peeked into her bowl. "Sweetie, did you put hot sauce in the ice cream?"

"Mm hmm."

"_That. Is. Disgusting_."

"Have you ever been seven months pregnant? Actually, seven and a half months?" she snapped.

Damon smiled weakly. "No, but your mother was pregnant five times in fourteen years. Not my first rodeo, kiddo."

"It doesn't count. You never had to have a baby inside you, pushing, kicking, swimming, giving you weird cravings. Making you pee every ten minutes. I've been up since four. I woke up, and I just couldn't get back to sleep. Couldn't get into a comfortable position. So fuck it, hot sauce on vanilla sounded yummy." Summer said all of this flippantly, like she wanted her father to think it was actually funny, a comedy bit, but Damon could see exhaustion and panic in her eyes. And he knew that the closer her due-date came, the more real everything was. She was supposed to be a mother in a mere six weeks. When the twins were born, he'd still been terrified. Didn't matter that he'd been a dad for fourteen years. And, of course, he'd admitted it to no one.

Damon kissed his little girl on the top of her head. He could picture her so clearly at eight, six, three years old. A baby in a highchair, throwing fistfuls of avocado at him, green chunks of mush landing in his hair, all over his face. "I'll make you a smoothie. Let's aim for less gross, and—"

"I don't want a smoothie."

Damon rolled his eyes and began peeling a banana, slicing it. How many bananas had he sliced just this way for her, when she was small? Soon he was digging in the fridge. Pulling out blueberries and almond milk. But then he realized what a stupid idea a smoothie was. "Dammit. I can't use the blender. I'll wake everybody up."

Summer grinned at him. "I can take care of the sound. There's a spell."

"Do you know how many people I'd kill, if it meant I could to do magic like that?"

She laughed. "Why are you even up so early, Dad?"

He started throwing fruit into the blender. "I like mornings." Pouring in the almond milk and the raw sugar stuff Elena insisted on buying he said, "You ready with your witchy powers, kiddo?"

"Since when? Mom was always dragging you out of bed, like the rest of us."

Damon shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe as you get older, God that sounds stupid, I'm not going to start talking like that. Forget I said it. And, in fact, today I'm going for a run. Youth. Vitality. All that crap. ... Okay, kiddo, let's get the mumbo jumbo going so we don't wake the monsters."

Summer laughed and murmured an incantation. A deafening silence fell all around them. This was cool. Very, very cool.

Damon turned on the blender. Everything, including the blender's motor, was absolutely silent. When he'd created a kick-ass smoothie, he waved at Summer, whose lips began to move. And then there was sound again. "Kiddo, that was awesome. Very impressive," he said, pouring smoothie into two glasses, one him and his daughter. As he handed a frosty glass to Summer, he stole her bowl of ice cream away.

"Dad!" Summer glared at him as she took the smoothie and sipped it cautiously.

"You'll thank me later. Seriously. There's being seven a half months pregnant, and then there's just giving up."

She rolled her eyes. Sipping his breakfast, he started rummaging through a pile of crap on the counter. "Weren't you and Lu supposed to clean up the kitchen last night?"

"We did."

Damon sighed and gestured at the mess all over the counter and the two pans in the sink. "I beg to differ. And you didn't need to soak those damned pans. Overnight? A little elbow grease wouldn't kill you." Locating his briefcase under the papers, he dragged an ace bandage out, pulled up the leg of his running pants, and started wrapping his knee.

"Old Civil War injury getting to you?" Summer said, mocking him but gentle about it.

He rolled his eyes but nodded. He'd spent months not running. Going out every morning this month was a pathetic victory over the slow march of time. The slow march towards his inevitable irrelevance and death. As he wrapped and flexed his bum knee (which twinged just a bit, warning him to not be a dumbass), Damon said, "I really am getting old. Seriously, Summer, don't get old."

"Oh, so I should turn?" she said, her voice light, taunting him. She wasn't serious. But just the thought of her drinking some idiot's blood cut him to his core.

Spinning around and pitching his voice low, serious, a little deadly, Damon said, "That is _not_ what I meant, young lady."

She let out a peal of laughter. "Dad! You are so easy to screw with. Don't get your panties in a twist. I have absolutely zero plans to become one of the ... da-da-da-dum ... undead."

Keeping his voice low, he murmured, "Summer, so help me God, if you have a little vampire friend dangling this offer to you—"

She laughed even harder. "Dad! Don't be stupid. And, by the way, I know your big-bad-vampire voice. I'm not scared of it."

He smiled, feeling a hint of relief. He waggled his eyebrows, saying, "Maybe you should be."

Summer kept laughing, seeming genuinely delighted now. She put both hands on her belly, stroking it, in this comforting, motherly way, like somehow she was already trying to take care of this baby inside her. Like she had what it took to be a mom. Weird. "The baby's not scared of you either, Grandpa. He's doing backflips."

Damon glared at his oldest and often most irritating child. "I am scary. Still. Frequently."

"Oh, little one," Summer said to her gigantic abdomen. Grinning. "I know. Isn't it cute that Grandpa thinks he's a threat?"

Damon finished wrapping the ace bandage around his knee, then leaned back, against the counter, arms crossed, face hard. The menacing look of Damon-freaking-Salvatore. "Call me Grandpa one more time, and I swear to—"

"Oh, he's kicking!" Summer shouted. "Come feel, Daddy."

Damon couldn't help grinning. He rushed over to her, knelt down and placed a tentative hand on her belly. Nothing for several seconds—and then a swift, strong kick. "He's a wily one," Damon said, tears in his eyes. Just like Summer. "Oh, that was a foot, but I think that's an elbow now. You know, it might be the fruit making him so active."

"What?"

"Fruit juice, it gets into their system, wakes them up or something. Orange juice especially." He leaned down to kiss her belly, just for a second, then stood up carefully, mindful of the dumb knee. "Like I said, padawan, not my first rodeo."

He was rinsing out his glass and shoving it in the dishwasher when Summer cleared her throat. "I've seen you scare the shit out of people, Dad. Don't worry, the vampire's not dead. It's just, the people who you freak out, on the occasions when you let him out, they don't know you."

Damon turned back and smiled tightly as he began stretching out his hamstrings. "I know how tempting the life is," he said. "And I know you know vampires, Summer." Particularly a few friends of "Uncle Tommy," who hung out at an invitation-only club in Brooklyn.

When he didn't let up his stern, appraising stare, Summer sighed. A very teenagery, drama-filled, fed-up-with-the-parental-units sigh. "You know, other people's parents, maybe they partied too much when they were teenagers, and they give their kids all these lectures about how it's not good to follow in your parents' footsteps, don't drink so much. Don't drop out of school. Maybe they did cocaine, or were a bully. One girl I went to college with, her dad did ten years in state prison. But nobody else's parents are going on about, 'don't follow in my footsteps and become a murderous vampire.' And nobody else has to keep telling her dad, don't worry, maybe it's funny to party with Uncle Tommy and his buddies, but why would I want to literally die and then be reborn, AND THEN have to drink other people's blood."

He broke out laughing.

Summer continued on her rant. "For the rest of my life, having to suck blood for food! Or un-life or whatever. I mean, ew! Gross! What was wrong with you that you willingly drank from that Katherine chick, so she could turn you into a mosquito? At least Mom and Aunt Caroline got turned by accident. Even Klaus and his siblings got turned against their will. But you, it might have gone off the rails, and you didn't know you were going to die that day, and then Uncle Stefan made you drink some lady's blood or whatever. But you actually asked a vampire to turn you. So no, I'm not that dumb."

Damon forced himself to stop laughing. "Fine. You're hilarious." He looked at her fondly. She really was so smart and adorable at the exact same time. "So, Summer my love, what are you going to do with your day, other than drizzling hot sauce on ice cream? Please tell me you have something productive to do."

"What productive things did you do from, say, 1864 to 1904? Hmm, Dad?" She finished her smoothie, then laboriously began to pull herself up from her seat at the kitchen table.

Damon rushed over again and took her hand, helping his child to her feet. Summer's belly brushed up against him, and he smiled awkwardly. Feeling almost shy. "I love you, Daddy, you know that," she murmured. She leaned in to kiss him on the cheek before placing her left hand on the small of her back and walking, not quite waddling, over to the kitchen sink, where she rinsed out her glass, left it to soak for some unknown reason, and then rummaged around the pile of crap on the counter until she pulled out a lavender binder. She handed it to him with a flourish.

"Aunt Caroline and I came up with a business plan," Summer said. "She's officially a partner in Salvatore Design, and we have a meeting with a client in Richmond. But it can't be just her and me, because she looks like a teenager. You know, Dad, I really don't know how she fooled so many people in Mystic Falls for so long. And wasn't she a news anchor someplace? She does _not_ look like she could be a news anchor."

Damon shrugged. "People are idiots. They see what they want to see. The sheer number of 'animal attacks' that were never questioned in Mystic Falls. The fact that I managed to fool Liz Forbes into thinking I was her closest vampire hunting buddy, for over a year. Fooled the whole council. I'm awesome, far above average at the diabolical plan. But still. That whole time, they thought they were so clever for making the rest of the town believe in animal attacks, and there I was, sitting among them."

Summer frowned. "Weren't a bunch of those attacks yours?"

Damon shrugged again. "Proving my earlier point. I'm terrifying."

His daughter stuck out her tongue at him. Stuck out her tongue at the notion that her dad was responsible for lots of murders. Yes, this was a normal family, absolutely. He wondered if she really believed that he'd killed so many people. "So anyway," she said. "Uncle Ric is coming as my partner. And Aunt Caroline insisted on coming along too, so she's masquerading as an intern. To make sure we don't screw up. Care is afraid that Uncle Ric won't sell the business hard enough. And she says if I showed up to a meeting all by myself, looking like this—" Summer gestured exaggeratedly to her gigantic belly. "They wouldn't take me seriously. Total discrimination."

Damon nodded, while secretly thinking that he wouldn't hire a graphic designer who was giving birth in six weeks, simply because she was bound to have greater priorities than his business in the near future.

"Dad, take a look. Would you? I want to know what you think."

Damon grabbed the binder and began flipping through it. "What is this, forty pages or something? Care is so damned OCD, it's scary." Squinting at the typeface, he frowned. "Are you using eight-point font?"

"Hardly," Summer said, gazing at him intently, suspicious of something. "Just go find your glasses, Daddy. I don't know why you don't just wear them in general. It's getting dumb. You're old, get over it."

He groaning, tired of this argument. "Because I don't need them 'in general.' I just need them for reading."

"Mom disagrees," Summer said. At the fridge now, bending down awkwardly, both hands on her back. "She says you should definitely wear them when you drive. Something about the other night and you almost hit a deer. Seriously, Dad?"

"Your mother's a worrier. Almost hit a deer, it is a huge exaggeration. She's almost as bad as Caroline." Summer looked like she was about to topple over into the fridge, that's how lopsided her figure had become in the last couple weeks. He frowned and said, "Sweetie, do you want me to just grab whatever gross food you want, get it out for you?"

"No! I can do it by myself."

Just like when she was four. Damon sighed and wandered into the living room. He found the damned spectacles on top of a book. Sliding them on, he began to read the girls' business plan, which seemed unnecessarily detailed. But was now, thankfully, in focus.

"You're a businessman," Summer shouted. "So I figured you might have some thoughts."

Damon tried to think of something intelligent to say about business. She'd asked him for "small business owner advice" before. Like he knew a damned thing. But Damon hadn't had a plan like this, or any kind of strategy, when he opened his bar in Charlottesville. He hadn't cared whether it turned a profit right away, and when it didn't he just sank more money into it for the first couple years, because he could, and because Elena was annoying invested in him having this real job. He'd always done whatever seemed best for the so-called business, whenever it seemed best, and he'd lucked out with Sajen in Charlottesville. Putting an ad up on Craigslist and then getting a manager who knew more than he did, who was professional and fun to hang out with, that was sheer dumb luck.

Before he could come up with some miraculously smart advice to give his daughter, there was a rap at the front door. Damon did not like early morning visitors. Nobody ever showed up at his door before six in the morning—or nine for that matter—for a fun reason.

Bonnie didn't say hello.

She just started talking a mile a minute, and rushing into the house without him technically inviting her in, ranting about magic being out of control, power surges, spells going wrong because the energy available was too much or too fast or too something. Summer was unnaturally quiet during all her ranting and raving. As Bonnie and Damon stood in the living room, he begged his old friend over and over to speak quietly, to not wake up the entire household. Summer lingered a few steps away. Listening to the conversation but not participating.

Damon glanced at Summer. His daughter's blank, shocked expression worried him. She wandered towards the couch, both hands on her lower back, truly waddling now, like she wasn't quite sure why she was moving, or how to move. Then she stood stock-still. When she began to shake, like a small child terrified of a strange monster, Damon ran the few steps to her, wrapped an arm around her, and helped her sit down, guiding her gently to a seat on the couch. She sat down hard. Expression still shocked, and almost blank.

"Summer, sweets, what's wrong?" he asked.

Bonnie knelt in front of Summer, grabbing her hand, squeezing it in a gesture of comfort. Smiling like she would smile at a child or an invalid.

Summer's voice was so damned small, and tears were streaming down her face, when she finally whispered, "Daddy, what if there's something wrong with my baby?"

#

**April 2041 **

**Four weeks later**

It was after midnight when Elena crept into their bedroom to find her husband reading in bed. Their oldest daughter curled up beside him. Summer's hand cradled her hugely pregnant belly, as if she were trying to protect her unborn child, even in her sleep. She still had two more weeks, but she was technically full-term and the baby could come any day now. Summer looked engorged. Also far too young and innocent in her sleep.

Damon looked exhausted. "She couldn't get to sleep in her own bed," he whispered. "It's like she's three all over again."

Elena smiled and sat down on the edge of the bed, kissing him, letting the kiss linger, needing this.

"How's the Bennett girl's baby?" he asked.

"Fine," she said. "Healthy. A textbook birth."

He frowned. "Then what's the problem? You look upset."

"The mother is seventeen," Elena said. Bonnie's cousin was now one of four teenage witches at the Salvatore School to end up pregnant this year. The first to give birth. Her parents had spent half of the poor girl's labor yelling at Caroline and Ric for being irresponsible authority figures, clearly unfit to be running a school. The other half yelling at Bonnie for recommending the school in the first place. "I mean, this is hard enough, what we're going through." She rubbed Summer's back gently. "But can you imagine if it were Lucia instead of Summer?"

Damon shuddered at the thought.

Summer stirred. "Mom?" she asked, propping herself up on one elbow. "How did it go?"

Elena smiled. "Perfect. Mother and baby are doing beautifully."

Summer bit her lip. "Lily's baby, is it, normal?"

Elena nodded. "Completely. Chubby baby girl. A full head of hair. And a good set of lungs on her. I was just telling your dad that the birth was textbook. This couldn't have gone any better. And Aunt Bonnie was there. She's checked the child over. She hasn't found anything to worry about, magically speaking."

Summer just collapsed at the good news, crying, sobbing even. Elena couldn't tell if she was relieved or still terrified, but something in their daughter had broken through. Positive or negative, the tears seemed to be a cathartic rush. When Summer quieted down, Damon and Elena managed to maneuver her lopsided body out of their bed. Elena coaxed their adult daughter into her own room, her own bed. Damon would probably have let Summer stay with them all night, but he was a pushover.

Elena came back to find him sitting in the same position, still reading an ancient Anne Rice novel, incredibly casual. As if this type of thing—magically-induced, witch-baby births—happened every day. Elena climbed into bed, curling into her husband of over twenty years. The man she'd loved for thirty-one years, if she was being honest with herself. She needed him tonight, his body, his words, his particular, bizarre soul. Damon put an arm around her, pulling her into his gentle but firm embrace as he lay his book on the bedside table, then his reading glasses. "You know, I always appreciate the sexy doctor look," Damon said, running a hand from her hip down her thigh, tracing a line along her hospital scrubs.

"I know I said the baby was fine, but there's no way of knowing the future," Elena said, frowning.

He put a finger on her lips. "Elena Gilbert, savior of the lost and the damned. You are officially off duty. How about we not try to solve everyone's problems right now?"

"But—"

"Honey, _take the win_. The baby's healthy. Bonnie's not worried. It's sunshine and kittens." After a pause, he added, "Bonnie really thinks it's all good, with the Bennett baby, right? You didn't just say that for Summer?"

Elena nodded. "Bonnie's not worried. For now. She didn't observe any of this chaotic magic, the stuff that's got the witches so worried. But she also admitted ... Damon, none of the witches know _what_ they should be looking for. And Bonnie thinks these children could grow up to be uber powerful. More than Summer, or Joey, or the twins."

Damon's eyebrows rose. Having a grandchild more powerful than his scary-powerful witchy children, that was terrifying. But he shook his head. "Elena, we are _taking the win_. And just be glad Lucia's socially awkward enough to still be a virgin."

She smacked him.

"What?"

"You are terrible."

But Damon grinned impishly and went on, for some reason. "Also, Joey's not getting anybody pregnant, Gil doesn't have any magic, and is also terrible with women, you hit menopause, so I think we're cool in general."

She glared at him and wriggled under the covers, deciding that she didn't have it in her to change into pajamas. She reached for the lamp, but he grabbed her hand, kissed it lightly, and somehow managed to stroke her wrist in the most erotic way possible. Her husband waggled his eyebrows and said, "Elena—you in those scrubs. It's not even fair."

She laughed. But then she glanced at him. He was watching her. Intently. Greedily. Hungrily. She raised her eyebrows, honestly incredulous. "Come on, Damon, I'm sweaty and exhausted. And hospital scrubs are not sexy. At all."

"I beg to differ," he said, stroking her cheek. He kissed her gently at first, and sweetly, but soon he deepened the kiss. As Damon pulled her closer to him, running his hands over her top and now under, Elena felt her whole body waking up. Lighter, less burdened, almost airy. Damon Salvatore was almost magic in his ability to pull her out of reality and into this completely other place. Like she could live with him in some castle in the sky. Like they could create their own world. Their own reality.

"You want sex now?" she breathed. "With everything going on? When it feels like—"

"The whole world's about to fall apart?"

"Yes."

"Especially now," he said, expression serious for a just a moment. "Elena, I need you now, not just to fuck. I need you. You can make me, make it all okay." He sat up, straddling her, running his hands beneath her shirt, wriggling the fabric up, until so soon he was stripping it off her. "What's even better than the scrubs is you, Elena."

Elena laughed. She shivered with delight as he ran his tongue from her throat to her breasts, unhooking her bra. She closed her eyes, allowing his fingers and lips to move all over her.

A moment later, she opened her eyes. Sat up to meet his gaze. Smiled, letting herself feel this piece of joy that she hadn't let fill her up in months. She wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him closer. The man she'd met when she was seventeen, who'd frightened her and excited her at the same time, he looked older now, weathered by the years since taking the Cure. She knew every line, every gray hair, every aching knee or new eyeglasses' prescription hurt Damon's vanity and ego. But she loved all those so-called imperfections. She loved him more every year. But she bit her lip now, worrying suddenly. Elena reached out, stroked her husband's stubbly cheek, "You didn't have to do any of this," she murmured. "You could still be living the wild vampire life. Instead of dealing with a pregnant daughter and five other kids, and all the other insanity in this house."

He frowned. "But I wouldn't have you." A beat later he added, "Or them. I'd do it all over, Elena. Exactly the same."

"Really?"

"You're ridiculous. Borderline insane, you know that? Yeah, yeah, you turned me human, or well, to be precise, Stefan did with his truly fucking insane need to be the hero and one-up my measly attempt at heroics. But I stuck around for all this crap."

She teared up, not knowing exactly why. But she'd needed to hear him say these words. It had been a long twenty-four hours. "You promise?"

"I'm good, Elena." He kissed her again. And everything complicated melted away.

Elena was left with herself and Damon, two bodies and souls, wrapping their limbs around each other. Healing each other. Making the rest of the world dissolve. For a moment at least. They made love quietly. It was a practiced quiet, ingrained in them out years and years of living with a houseful of children. But this quiet was also intense. She and her husband had gotten so good at silent lovemaking, they could scream out to each other without words, moan without sound, convulse and shake and share the ecstasy that was Damon-and-Elena, without making one single sound. Brought closer, somehow, by their shared silence. By mouthing each other's names. As Damon broke her apart and then stitched her back together, Elena let out a long, shuddery sigh. Tears streamed down her face. She hadn't known how much she was holding onto, until she let herself go.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N**

At long last, another chapter. As always, thank you to everyone who is reading, following, and reviewing. Especially when you review, it really makes me want to keep writing. As usual, this particular story is unbeta-ed, so apologies for any sloppiness.

Hope everyone is surviving these crazy times!

-N

**Chapter 6**

**May 2041**

**Mystic Falls, Virginia**

He'd given up on reading his book. Or any of the dozen magazines on the table beside him. Or playing a game on his phone. Or sitting there casually, sipping and coffee and looking bored, like a normal person in a normal waiting room. Damon had given up pretending that everything was fine. He'd stretched his body over a row of chairs and covered his face with his hands. Eyes scrunched tight. Letting his complicated mess of feelings wash over him. Letting his blood pound in his ears. Letting fear and sorrow, guilt and sheer helplessness wash over him, until he was soaking in messy, pure, raw emotion. He'd given up on pretending, but he was still gritting his teeth to stop a primal scream from ripping free, escaping from his mouth. No his lungs. No, his bones. No, his feet. That's how far down this feeling went. To the tips of his fingers, to the depths of his toes.

It wasn't panic. Panic had swept away hours ago. It was something deeper. Something Damon could feel within and without. Something l in the Earth itself, two stories down, in dirt he could picture below this building. Like the Earth itself was screaming. This feeling, it wasn't just Damon Salvatore being scared. No, it was bigger than him, or his family.

"Damon," Ric's voice came from a foot away, though it sounded like it was coming from a mile away, through a tunnel or under water. "I'm really sorry, but I've got to go home. The school, the kids. They're all freaked out, even the little ones who don't know anything. The weather out there. And we've had three of our girls go through this." It had been raining, hurricane-level rain, ever since Summer started labor. The other witch girls with their little witch babies, hadn't given birth in crazy weather, but, of course, if something was going to happen to Damon's family, it was going to be extra weird. Nobody knew if the two were connected, even Bonnie wasn't sure the weather was anything but a coincidence, but Damon knew. In his bones. He could feel the whole Earth in tumult. He was pissed at the Earth. He'd had enough of the whole damned planet making his family's life complicated, and one of these days, he'd like to get out of the business of being someone who, for reasons passing understanding, had to be involved when planet-level-issues were in play.

Damon nodded at Ric but didn't look up. "I know."

"Damon, if—"

"You don't owe me anything, so just run along."

Ric stood there. Damon could hear him not walking away, and could feel the man glaring at him. He'd had enough of Alaric Saltzman and his condescending glares.

"The first time you met me, you wanted to kill me," Damon said, not knowing why he was picking a fight except for the fact that he needed to distract himself from anything real. But also, somehow, right now, he couldn't stand the sound of his best friend's voice. They'd had an almost drama-free friendship for decades, but somehow right now, Damon wanted to throw Ric up against a wall.

"You killed my wife," Ric murmured. "But why the hell are you—"

"Technically, I turned her."

Ric sighed. "But you had to kill her in order to, I mean, that's what I—Damon! What are you talking about? That was thirty years ago."

"When you tried to kill me?"

"When you did kill me."

"And then we became friends."

"Against my better judgment, but that's not what I want to say to you right now. Right now I want to say that Summer will be fine, labor just takes some time—"

Damon shot up, almost toppling the chairs over in his haste. "But that's the problem, isn't it? You became my friend against your better judgment, and then you spent the eight years vacillating between being my friend, and thinking I was a sociopath."

Ric laughed.

Damon shook his head. It wasn't funny. "We were friends, you and me. Back then. When I was a vampire. And, it was almost like I was human again. But that was never enough for you."

Damon felt blood in his temples pounding. Somewhere, deep down, even though he would never be a vampire again, he felt consumed by that old thirst. Nothing supernatural was happening, Damon would never be anything but human now, but, in times like these, when his very existence felt threatened, when it seemed like a mac truck was about to run him over—Damon was tapped into this basic, achingly familiar instinct. It wasn't actually the need to drink another person's blood. These days he was hungry for cheeseburgers, not human blood. But below a vampire's hunger there was an instinct, a basic need that you were trying to fill with the blood.

"Damon!"

It was an intensely basic need. A need for more. A need for something outside of his body. Connection? Understanding? A guarantee that he'd still be alive in an hour? A guarantee that his children were safe?

"So which one am I now?" he snapped at Ric.

Safety. Yes, that was it. At the core of a vampire's thirst was a desperate need to be safe. Blood made you safe. It meant that you could keep going, day to day. And it meant that you kept your wits about you, that you could protect yourself. And it meant that you had someone's life flowing into you, some other person sustaining you.

And right now, Damon felt so out of control, so far away from safety, like he might crumble. If he couldn't make all of this okay, if he couldn't protect his little girl the way he'd always promised to protect her. He wished it were as simple as needing to drink warm blood from the vein.

Ric frowned, tossing his car keys from hand to hand, nervously, as if he needed something to do with his hands. "I'm telling you, Summer will be fine. She _is_ fine. I just peeked my head in. Elena and Caroline threw me out. Bonnie was busy with some kind of spell. But Elena and the doctors say Summer's doing great. It's normal for a first baby to take a long time to come out, or something. All the monitors. Her vitals. The baby's vitals. It's normal. I mean, seriously, Damon, I don't know if you remember, but the twins almost desiccated Caroline, they could have killed her, siphoning off magic from her, stealing her vampirism. So just be glad Summer's not a vampire. This is a normal delivery, and I know you're freaking out because it's your kid in there, and I'd be terrified if it was Lizzie or Josie. But man, she's fine. Everybody's fine."

Damon rolled his eyes. He'd heard all of this before. But his daughter had been in that damned delivery room for twenty-four hours, and she sounded like she was in more pain than Elena had ever been in. He didn't care about all the fetal monitors and blood pressure monitors in the world. He didn't trust any shred of modern medical equipment to save the day. And he was afraid that Elena wasn't telling anybody the whole story. He'd believe that Summer was fine when the baby was born, the storm stopped, and this whole damned thing was over. "Whatever," Damon finally managed to huff out.

"Look, I'd stay, but with this storm. I've got to—"

"Ric, here's what I want to know. I don't want to hear any more of your ill-informed opinions on medical shit that you have no place having opinions on. But I am curious about where you actually landed on the is-Damon-a-sociopath-thing. Because I'm realizing, since I've had a whole day to just lie here and think, that you've never actually told me."

Ric laughed. "Damon, what the hell?"

"You used to go back and forth, back and forth. I'd be your friend. Then you'd hate me. I'm just thinking, maybe you still look at me and you see the man who killed your wife. And by the way, I turned her, but of course you're right, that included killing her. I drained her, drop by drop by drop. And she was delicious, but that is a compliment, obviously. Not everybody tastes good. Isobel, she wasn't everybody."

Alaric Saltzman looked like he was about to be sick. Good. "Fuck you, Damon," he spat the words out.

"So what am I, Ric? Your good buddy? Or the greatest villain in your life? I mean, how much do you hate me?"

"Right now I think you're a man in need of an ass kicking."

"You want to kick my ass, I think I can take you. _But tell me who I am, goddammit_." With every word, Damon felt himself more and more out of control, despite the utterly controlled cadence of his voice. And maybe he was looking to be punched. But he was also just looking for something real. Something honest. Elena was lying to him, he just knew it. He was too far away to hear Summer's screams, but somehow, he could hear them, over and over, his little girl struggling and crying out. Somehow he could feel the whole world rocking as she struggled to bring his grandchild into the world. Somehow, the world was putting up a fight, like this little child was just too much for it. And Damon had been putting up a fight for two centuries, and he was tired. And mad. And if Ric wanted to punch him, for turning Isobel into a nightmare all those years ago, then so be it. Getting hit hard in the face by a vampire hunter, that might feel incredible tonight.

After a what seemed like a lifetime, Ric sighed and said, "You shouldn't talk that way about Isobel."

"Oh, I am very much aware how much of an asshole I am."

Dramatic throat clearing. Then his friend went on. "You changed, Damon. You really, honestly changed. You're not that guy anymore."

"I haven't changed as much as you think."

Ric sighed again. "You're my best friend, okay? I don't go around just pretending to like you. Okay? And if you're trying to paint some picture about how you're some evil villain, and this, tonight, is somehow your fault—Stop it. Nobody hates you. Your daughter doesn't hate you. _Your daughter is going to be fine_. And none of this has anything to do with how many people you used to kill. And I have to go, but me leaving right now, it has nothing to do with you, or hating you, or believing that you represent every evil thing that goes bump in the night."

Damon rolled his eyes.

"Damon! I've got kids waiting. Staff waiting. Jeremy can only hold the fort down so long. And you know, the world doesn't revolve around you."

"Fuck you." But Damon smiled, just a little.

Ric laughed. Inexplicably, he laughed. "The world doesn't even revolve around Elena."

Damon stopped himself from laughing. "You should tell that to my wife."

Ric was walking away, but he turned back, keys in his hands, again tossing the car keys from hand to hand. Rhythmically. "Everything's not your fault, Damon."

Damon nodded and lay back down on the line of waiting room chairs. "I know. I'm not stupid."

"Stefan's not your fault."

"He—"

"Not your fault, Damon. Enzo wasn't your fault. Rose wasn't your fault. Elena and Caroline getting turned. Jenna."

Damon rubbed his eyes. "Jenna was one hundred percent my fault."

But Ric came back, gripped his shoulder, murmuring, "You had no idea Klaus would do that. And you saved Caroline and Tyler that night. Now, Tyler's uncle, and then Tyler himself later, that was your fault. Isobel, your fault. I do still hate you for that, a little bit, and maybe I hate you for a bunch of other shit, because the body count is high and I've seen you in action. But I love you like a brother, I know you're better than that old shit, and so you're stuck with me. Metaphorically at least, because, as I've previously announced, I'm going home." When Damon didn't say anything, Ric murmured, "I'll check in on you in the morning. Any news, you call me."

Damon grabbed Ric's hand and squeezed it, just for a few seconds. "I'm sorry," he muttered.

"For what?"

"For taking Isobel from you." He looked up at his friend, remembering how he'd taunted Alaric Saltzman about her in front of a crowd, at that inane Mystic Falls win-a-date-with-an-eligible-bachelor-event. He remembered Ric's face when he'd tried to kill Damon, and when Damon had actually killed Ric in retaliation. He remembered Ric's face every time Damon had disappointed him over the years. Every time Ric had revealed how little he thought of Damon. Every time his old contempt had boiled up. Every time he'd dismissed Damon as a waste of space. Every time he'd made it clear that they were not really friends.

Ric's face now was old and weathered. A mess of pain and confusion and restraint. He shook his head, as if refusing to get into a further discussion of Isobel or the past. "Your daughter is going to be fine, Damon. And you are going to be one hell of a grandpa."

Damon broke out laughing. "We're not using that word."

Ric smiled. A real smile. "I'm just saying, man, you're good with kids, and you're also in a unique position to talk about how different life was 'back in my day, sonny.' You can say tell your grandson how you remember when the automobile was invented, and not have it be a dumb joke."

Damon laughed. It was kind of beautiful to laugh, to feel just a little lightter. "Out!" Damon shouted.

"We'll just get you a pair of bifocals. And some suspenders. Do you need some Metamucil?"

Laughing some more, he yelled, "Out before I call security!"

Damon closed his eyes, breathing in this feeling of peace, listening for Ric's footsteps moving away from him. He thought his friend had finally left, but then he noticed that the footsteps had stopped. After a long silence, Ric muttered, "If anybody thinks you're a monster, it's you. Get over it. Everybody else loves you. Stop being an ass to yourself." And then, without waiting for a response, he finally walked away.

###

"Dad!"

A voice. Someone's voice. Male. Familiar. Not Stefan. Not his father. Not Tommy Fell from down the lane.

"Hey! Come on. Dammit, would you just wake up?"

Not Reverend Fell. Not Jonathan Gilbert.

"Please. Please. Dad!"

And then another voice, younger, but powerful. "Gramps!"

He had a distinct feeling of not being anywhere, of his mind traveling, not through space or time, but through a murky darkness that separated one world from another. He tried to shout at the voices, to answer them in some way, but he couldn't. It was like there was no air this place. This place that wasn't a place. It was an in-between place. A place on the verge of being something else. A ... liminality. A word from a college lecture hall, a vocabulary word from that time before his real life, before the war, before he knew that vampires were real.

Somebody was shaking him. Roughly. He looked up to see a kid with dark hair and green eyes. And freckles. Maybe ten years old. The kid looked vaguely familiar. "Gramps, come on," the kid yelled, pulling Damon up. Even though there was no floor or ground to get up from. There didn't appear to be gravity either, the kid was dragging him up like Damon weighed nothing.

"Gramps?" Damon said, mind beginning to spin. "What the—"

"You've got to wake up."

The kid dragged him through the murky sort-of-nothingness, and through a wooden floor (right through the very solid floorboards, like he was made of water). And suddenly the kid was gone, and Damon was crouching on a wooden floor, a floor that felt real again, in a place that had gravity again, in front of his seventeen year-old brother.

"Stef," Damon breathed out the name in relief. He was inside the manor house. Whatever that was, it was just a dream. He was home.

"Damon, you have to wake up," his brother said, but his voice, it was wrong, different, it didn't fit this house. And looking at Stefan's face, something was off. His eyes, they were all wrong. Like they'd lived a millennium, those eyes. Sad eyes. Not his brother's eyes. This person in front of him carried the weight of a hundred grown men. But Stefan was only seventeen.

Damon sat up and practically knocked heads with his brother.

"You have to go back soon," Stefan said. "You're. Brother, I don't know why you're here, but it's not your time and you shouldn't be here."

A whooshing. A familiar speed. And they were somewhere else. Another house. Stefan stood in front of a roaring fire. Damon's head was spinning.

"Dad!" yelled a voice from far away. Who the hell was that, and what father were they yelling for?

"This isn't our house," Damon said, his head fuzzy. Still sprawled on floor, he made no move to get up. He wasn't sure he could stand if he tried.

Stefan frowned at him.

"This isn't right," Damon said. "This isn't our house. I've never been here. But I have. Something's famililar. So that doesn't make sense." He glanced around. Noticed an electronic ... "Is that an iPhone?" he asked, having no idea what the word meant but sure that it was a word.

Stefan frowned some more. Worry lines were threatening to overtake his brother's forehead and possibly travel all over his body. "Look, Damon, I don't have time for whatever nonsense is going on inside your head."

"What is that device on the table?" He pointed at the thing that he was sure was called an iPhone.

Stefan's worry lines were really getting out of control.

The door swung open, and there was movement beside Damon, a wind, and a blur, something moving so fast he couldn't see it, not really, couldn't trace it. Though he had a sense that perhaps at some point, for some number of years, his eyes had once been sensitive enough to—

"Hello, mate." A man appeared next to Damon. Possibly the source of the blurring movement-wind-thing. He couldn't place the guy, but something was tugging at him, some memory, another strange familiarity. Damon scanned the stranger. Dark-haired. Handsome. His British accent was intensely appealing. If Damon weren't married—

But. "I'm not married," Damon blurted out.

Stefan frowned, his forehead now almost comical.

The handsome Brit flashed a grin. "I believe the lovely Elena would beg to differ. I was just peeping in on Bonnie, and I couldn't help but notice how lovely they both still are. Though I'm a bit peeved that Bonnie had the audacity to get married and have several children. With someone else. When was the last time she spared a thought for—"

"Every day," Damon said, grinning. Not completely sure why he was saying it, or who exactly this Brit was, or this who was this Bonnie he spoke of, or— And then a tiny bit of the world came into focus. Elena. That name, it meant much more to him than "iPhone" did. Elena. Elena. "_Elena. Elena Gilbert_." He began rambling to his brother and the strange, too-fast man. "There's a delicate creature named Elena Gilbert, but she isn't delicate, she's strong as nails. And she wears trousers. Sometimes exceedingly short trousers."

Stefan smiled a tight smile. "Damon, we really don't have time for this. I'm not exactly sure what's going on in that thick skull of yours. But I have a message from Emily Bennett. And then you need to get out of here before you get stuck here."

Damon's head was spinning again. Emily Bennett. Emily. _Emily_. He knew that name. He just couldn't place it. He couldn't line it up with a face. But it was an important name.

The Brit laughed like this was incredibly entertaining and said, "Damon. You're out of your body right now, in between life and death. A very powerful witch brought you here, to us, so that we could give you a message. But if you don't wake up very soon, you'll be stuck in Peace, and as fabulous as this particular afterlife is, I'd really prefer that you got home to your family."

Damon gulped, not understanding any of this. "Stefan is my only family. My father—"

"Has been dead for almost 200 years," Stefan cut in.

"That's not—"

"Damon, it's the year 2041. You're alive because, well—"

"You fell in love with a sociopathic vampire named Katherine Pierce," the Brit said, speaking so fast Damon could hardly follow him. "Anything clicking in that little human brain of yours?"

"Enzo!" Stefan, for some reason, was chiding a man who seemed ten years older than him. He wouldn't dare speak to a man like this in front of their father, or well, ever.

"Shut up, Salvatore. Let's not forget that you freaking killed me." Damon's eyes widened. None of this made any sense. Enzo turned back to Damon. "Damon, we don't have time for this. We need to get you back to Elena and the children."

Damon's head was spinning again. Something ... Something was almost clicking. "Elena?" And then it all came rushing back. Two centuries of memories. Aching, unbearable pain. Two centuries of regrets. Blood. In a whoosh faster than vamp speed, his whole life, his whole self, came back to him. For those transitory moments, he'd been the young man who'd known nothing about the supernatural—the twenty-five year-old man, mostly a boy, who'd deserted the confederate army to come home to check on his brother. But now, that other Damon was gone. He was himself again. And he was in the boarding house, though it didn't look the way it did now. This place was frozen in time, the time before his brother had died and he'd signed the building over to Caroline and Ric, for the school. "Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck. _Stefan._ You're dead."

Stefan let out this snort of relief. "For a quarter century."

"Katherine turned us."

"Lightbulb," Enzo said with a look of pure amusement.

"Am I dead?"

Stefan shook his head. "No."

Damon let out a sigh of pure relief, then started looking everywhere for an exit. "I have to see Summer."

"Not presently, you're not dead presently," Enzo added. "But if you stay here too long, you might end up fertilizing daisies, so let's get on with it, shall we? Miss Emily Bennett was quite insistent."

Damon was rubbing his eyes, like somehow that could help him understand this situation. "Emily hates me." But then, something new was happening. A voice was screaming from him from far away.

Then, somehow, someone else was crawling out of the floor, standing up. "What the hell?" the young man said. "Dad? What the hell?"

Damon stared slack-jawed at his oldest son. Joey stood there, scanning the room, looking confused but ready to fight if necessary. He was dressed in one of his boyfriend's Harry Potter t-shirts and a pair of jeans so ripped up, Damon wasn't sure what the point of wearing them was. Joey's hair, usually so carefully style, was all mussed up without a speck of product. The poor kid looked exhausted. Damon knew how worried Joey was about his sister. He'd been ordered out of the hospital twice already.

The kid frowned. "Did some vamp grab us and bring us to the school?"

His sandy hair had grown out so long, he looked like a surfer. Three-days-worth of beard on his face. Freckles. Kind eyes. His kid, the troublemaker, had kind eyes. He was such a good kid, and most people didn't see that. But what was Joey doing here?

"Uh," Damon said, feeling even more lost.

"It looks wrong," Joey was saying. "Aunt Care got rid of that sofa, when I was little, and I've never seen that painting."

Stefan was pacing around the room, radiating nerves. Enzo was looking on with excitement, almost like this whole scenario was delighting him because it was going to be so amusing. But Damon didn't find this amusing at all. If he was in danger, if staying here too long meant dying, then Joey was in danger.

"Joseph," Stefan muttered. Damon glanced at his brother, who had stopped pacing but was looking at the floor. A minute ago Stefan had been in control of everything, demanding that Damon listen to some message from witches, or Emily at least. But now, when faced with the opportunity to meet the kid, Stefan seemed to have descended into a sea of doubt and insecurity.

Damon climbed to his feet and grabbed hold of his son, pulling him close to him, and squeezing just hard enough to let him know that he was loved, that his dad was going to take care of him. "Kiddo, we're apparently paying a little visit to the afterlife, and these two gentlemen are ... Look, I really want you to meet them before we go home."

Joey glanced at him, eyes going wide, wide, wide. "Dad? What? Like seriously, are we high?"

Gesturing to his brother, Damon said, "Joey, this is your ... Dammit. Stefan, just look at the kid, okay? Get over yourself. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity." When Stefan still didn't look up, he snapped, "I mean, maybe for once in your life, un-life, whatever, you can stop brooding and just be excited that you get to do another impossible thing!" When Stefan continued to stare at the floor and Joey continued to stare all around the room, clearly not comprehending and still looking for an exit, Damon shouted, "Goddammit, Joey, this is my brother!"

Stefan chuckled, looking up. Shy. So shy, as he watched his own nephew's reaction.

Joey pulled away from Damon. "Brother?"

Damon nodded.

"Your brother?"

Damon nodded again, grinning. All of the sudden, despite any possible dangers that might be involved with his son temporarily hanging out in the afterlife, Damon felt happy. Absurdly happy. Even free. "Joey, this is Stefan Salvatore. Your uncle."

"My dead uncle."

"Well, we don't need to go around calling anybody names."

And then Stefan was striding across the room and wrapping Joey in a fierce bear hug. Damon wasn't sure what the rules of this afterlife were, but it really did feel like the real world, a a place where you could hug or hit or even breathe. "Joey," Stefan said as he pulled away, face wet with tears. "It's a pleasure to meet you. It's, wow, it's. I don't even know ..."

Joey looked starstruck. "I've heard a lot about you, Uncle Stefan." After a beat he said, "You're different than I thought you'd be." Then he looked at Enzo. "Who's that?"

"Enzo St. John," Damon murmured.

"Aunt Bonnie's Enzo?" Joey said.

Enzo gave off this bitter little laugh. "I wouldn't say I'm Bonnie's Enzo since she married that human and had children with—"

Damon scrubbed his face with both hands, feeling the lines on his skin and wondering how strange he looked to his brother and his old friend. He'd aged almost a quarter century since they'd died. "Dude. You told her to live her life. So she lived her life. Doesn't mean she's not still hung up on you."

Stefan nodded. "As Lexi says, 'contrary to popular opinion, there can actually be more than one _one_.' "

Damon raised a brow. "Lexi's here?"

His brother nodded. "She still hates you."

Enzo was rolling his eyes, but he stuck his hand out to Joey to shake. "Pleasure to meet you, kid. I'm a big fan. You have provided me with countless hours of amusement."

Joey grinned. Stefan looked like he was about to go into some kind of lecture. But then he locked eyes with Damon. "Brother, I wish we could do this all day, every day really, but we're on a schedule. The witches are talking about an overflow of magic. It's why witches on Earth, are feeling like something's out of control. It's why even you can feel it, Damon. The Earth bubbling with energy, or something. Witches are not great at explaining this."

Joey nodded. "Yeah, that's exactly it, bubbling. Dad, remember you were telling me what you were feeling?"

"So then you've got all the witch births in such a short span of time," Stefan went on. "Eight years ago. And now. Including my niece."

Damon frowned. "It's too much magic, isn't it? We let it out of that hotspot thing and now it's wreaking havoc. Bonnie was afraid of that. Most of the other witches. They all said—" Shit. This was his fault. Literally. If he hadn't swayed Elena and Bonnie to his way of thinking, they would have bottled up the magic. Mystic Falls would be fucked, that was clear from the vision, and none of his younger children would exist, only Summer, but the rest of this wouldn't be happening. This, all of this, including Summer, it was on him. He'd picked the world that he'd wanted to live in, he'd bulldozed his way through other people's opinions, and now the world was paying for it. Specifically, his daughter was paying for Damon Salvatore's particular brand of hubris.

Stefan and Enzo were both shaking their heads emphatically. "No, mate," Enzo said. "You lot did the right thing. You returned the world, the living world, to its natural state. Before witches like Cade and Esther started screwing with nature, creating Hell, the Other Side, vampires, werewolves, etc, etc,—"

Stefan held up a hand. "Too many details, St. John. ... Damon, what you need to know is that there is more magic now, but it's not too much. It's the right amount. The ritual you performed back in 2018, it actually restored the balance of nature, giving magic back to the Earth, magic that had been essentially stolen."

Damon felt his whole body shiver. From far away, he heard more voices, but he couldn't see any new people. "Stef, I think you need to hurry. I might be heading back to the land of the living."

Joey nodded. "My dad's right, something's up. Uncle Stefan, tell us, please."

Stefan began talking a mile a minute. "Emily Bennett wants you to know that it's not a coincidence that four of your children are incredibly powerful. It's not a coincidence that all those witches gave birth eight years ago, and that the whole thing is happening again. But, also, and this is important, so I want you to hear it. Summer will be fine. Your grandchild will be fine. And ... that's really weird to say. Grandchild. Grandchild."

"Focus, Stefan," Damon said as his arms began to tingle something fierce.

Stefan nodded. "Too many witches perished over the centuries. Nature's restoring the balance by creating more witches. But, um—"

"These witches of these new generations have an obligation to nature. To be true servants of nature," Enzo cut in. "And you, mate. You have an obligation. You too, Joey. Elena got pregnant with you right after the hotspot. You are linked to this. You can't take this obligation lightly."

"Well, what am I supposed to do about that?" his kid snapped, looking indignant all of a sudden.

Damon felt his body begin to fade away from the boarding house. "And what kind of obligation does nature expect from me? I'm not a witch," Damon said. "I don't have anything to do with—"

"You were given a gift," Stefan told him, speaking to him like he was an idiot. "Apparently. The Cure. In your body and Elena's."

"It was just a potion."

Enzo shook his head. "Not just any potion, there's a reason no one was ever able to replicate it. Quetsiya didn't even understand what she'd created. Vampirism's a cheap trick, cheating death. But the Cure, you and Elena, you're not cheating death. It restored your bodies. Powerful magic, mate. And it's all about balance, you see that?"

"Like Adam and Eve going back to the garden," Stefan said.

Damon felt like he was about to faint, or disappear, any second. "Look, do you guys have any actionable advice, or do you want to make up poetry about death?"

Stefan laughed, and said, "Tell Elena and Caroline hi for me."

Damon's eyebrows were almost in his hair. "You want me to tell them hi? Any other banal messages?"

Joey giggled, positively giggled.

"Tell Caroline that she could do a lot better than Klaus," Stefan said, "but that I don't hate her for it. Tell her I'm so proud of her. The school is amazing. The girls are amazing. And, by the way, brother, your kids are really cute. They're incredible. Tell them that for me, will you? Tell Elena she's a great mom. I always knew she would be. Oh, and she had a patient two days ago, she misdiagnosed him. The man needs an MRI. And tell Gilbert that I'm rooting for him. It's perfectly understandable to feel like an outsider, and I know what's it's like to have a brother who's so much snappier, who always steals the spotlight."

Joey bristled and said, "Are you talking about me? I don't steal anything from Gil. He just sits around moping or feeling like he's better than everybody—"

"What are we talking about?" Damon asked, perplexed at where this was going. It was all beginning to feel so surreal.

"Damon, you understand this kid." Stefan gestured towards Joey, talking fast again, like he was worried about running out of time, "but I don't think you really know how to communicate effectively with Gilbert, or Lucia for that matter. It might help if you could step back and listen—"

"Listen to what?"

Stefan gave out this great, self-important sigh. "To your children!"

"And what exactly do you think you know about being a parent?" Damon snapped.

Enzo was laughing and Joey was muttering something about none of this being his fault, and how Gil just needed to learn how to chill.

Damon's brother, his only family for most of his life, grabbed him by the shoulders and drew him close. The hug felt so damned real Damon gasped. His brother. His brother. This was really Stefan, holding onto Damon's frail, middle-aged human form, giving him unwanted parenting advice with his patented brand of condescension.

Damon felt his eyes welling up with tears, and he wasn't sure if they were real tears or spirit tears or some kind of metaphor for something. He could feel his body morphing, melting, in a way that was not possible, but somehow going away from this place.

"I'm sorry, Stef," Damon muttered, the words just coming out, as his time here was fading. He needed to say it, to be heard. He couldn't stop himself from saying it.

His brother furrowed his brow into a deep frown. Stefan's eyes were ancient as he smiled at Damon. So far from seventeen. "What are you sorry for?"

"Everything."

Stefan squeezed Damon's shoulders. White fire flowing into him. "Brother," Stefan said. "Stop blaming yourself for me. I died for me. Not you."

"You died for—"

But Stefan shook his head. "I wanted out. I couldn't do it anymore."

"Caroline—"

"Is beautiful. But she deserves better than me."

"She got Klaus."

Stefan looked pained as he said, "She'll smarten up. She's got a damned eternity. I took the out. And you got the life. And I don't know how, but you're good at it. You're good for Elena, a million times better than I ever could be. You're an impossibly good father. So go back to it. Help Joseph find some purpose in his life so he can stop getting arrested. Help Summer be a mother. And tell Gilbert that his Uncle Stefan is rooting for him."

Damon nodded. Stefan squeezed harder.

"Tell Elena I'll always love her. Tell her she made the right choice. Damon, you made the right choice. You and Elena, you're the real thing now."

Everything turned white, hot, and full of light.

Damon was falling, falling, falling. He could sense Joey beside him, staying with him, somehow, following Damon all the way back.

###

"Mr. Salvatore!" Several voices were shouting at him. Then he was sitting up, bonking heads with a nurse. Joey was sprawled out on the floor, eyes closed. Another nurse was attending to Joey.

"My boy," Damon breathed. "Is he okay?"

Joey opened his eyes.

They managed to shoo the nurses away by claiming that they'd just been overtired. When the nurses continued hovering, Joey whispered a spell that sent papers flying everywhere at the nurses' station, and sent the nurses running after said papers.

Damon and Joey sat talking about what the hell they'd just experienced. Drinking the coffee Joey had brought, the reason he'd shown up in the first place.

"Dad, what are we supposed to do?" Strange as it was, Joey was taking this all in stride. He'd been brought up in magic and darkness. And Joey could handle anything, anyway, always had been able to. And Damon knew how to handle Joey. If Gil were here, Damon wouldn't know how to talk to him—maybe Stefan was right about that one.

Damon closed his eyes, searching for the magic. It was booming. Like a heartbeat. "Can you feel that?" he asked Joey.

"Yeah," Joey said. "It's something to do with Summer's labor."

Damon opened up his eyes. "Is she okay?"

Joey bit his lip. "They say she is, but when I went in she didn't look good, and they won't let me—"

And then, something strange happened. Damon felt like a strong wind had knocked him over. They both fell out their seats. Joey's coffee went flying.

"Excuse me?" a nurse was saying from the desk. "You boys okay?"

"Dad, she's in trouble," Joey whispered, tears in his eyes. This kid who could take anything, who often exploded in a fight but never imploded into depression—this kid was crying.

Damon tried to climb to his feet, but his knee twinged. And then screamed out at him. He tried to ignore the pain, but soon it was shooting through his whole being. His nerves on fire from his toe to his hip. "Goddamn!"

"Sir!" the busybody nurse was saying. "Let's watch our language!"

Damon just rolled his eyes as he said, "Kiddo, help your old man up?" As Joey pulled him to his feet, Damon felt like his knee might explode.

Another strong wind threatened to knock them down, but Joey seemed ready for it this time. He held onto Damon, keeping them both up. "Contractions?" Damon asked.

Joey nodded.

They ran down the hallway. Damon was limping at first, and then somehow he wasn't, he was running full speed. He could feel the whole world rushing into him and through him. Something important was happening. Like the magic was on his side. "Servants of nature!" he yelled to Joey's back.

"What?" Joey skidded to a stop outside a door marked Salvatore.

"That's what this is about," Damon said, stepping in front of Joey and pushing the door open.

Elena and another doctor were in the middle of examining Summer's lady parts. As they threw the door open, the room full of women started yelling at Damon and Joey. But Damon could feel the magic in here. The magic wanted him. He pulled his son inside, pulled the door shut behind them.

Summer lay on the bed in the center of the room, utterly exhausted and defeated. Her belly was so large: the baby inside her appeared to be trying to swallow his little girl up. His grandson was two weeks overdue, which Elena had assured him was normal for a first baby. But this utter defeat on Summer's face, throughout her whole body—Damon didn't like it. Something seemed wrong. He'd seen Elena through so many labors. Been right by her side for hours of contractions. And this didn't look like a normal labor. Summer was sweating and whimpering. It looked like maybe she wanted to be screaming, but she was too exhausted to do anything but whimper. Caroline was holding her hand, probably letting her squeeze as much as she wanted to, squeeze a vampire so you wouldn't hurt anybody.

Elena wandered over to Damon and whispered, "I don't know what's wrong, honey, but the baby won't budge. We gave her an epidural, but she's still in pain. We were going to do a c-section, but as soon as we started talking about it, the baby's heartrate went through the roof."

Damon kissed Elena on the top of the head. "It's going to be okay, hon. We just saw Stefan."

"What?"

Looking around the room, he noticed one person out of place. Caroline, Bonnie, Elena, they should all be here. Obviously. But the head of the OB/GYN department at Mystic Falls General needed to get the hell out. Damon held up a hand and spoke directly to Bonnie, who was standing at the window with a crystal, looking intent and extra witchy. "Bon Bon! I've got a message from Emily. So I need Cora Lockwood to go."

Bonnie exchanged looks with Elena and Caroline. Elena looked ready to burst into tears at any moment. Caroline nodded fiercely, stepping over to Tyler's third cousin. Damon watched as the woman's eyes glaze over. Soon the doctor was scurrying out of the room, a look of determination on her face as if she'd just remembered that she had something really important to do, someplace else to go.

Another wind almost knocked over Damon and Joey. It seemed to rock through Summer's body. His little girl screamed. No one else seemed affected, not even Elena. Strange. Damon ran to Summer. He let her hold his hand. "Baby, you squeeze as hard as you want, you hear me?"

Summer nodded, crying.

"And cry, yell, let it out, that's good. Look, honey. The witches, they want your baby to be a servant of nature."

"A witch?" Bonnie asked. "Of course the baby will be a witch."

Damon shook his head. He and Joey tried to explain everything they'd learned in their peek behind the veil. Damon kissed his daughter's sweaty forehead. "More than just a witch. A true servant of nature. A protector of the balance. Witches are always supposed to do that, but these babies, that's their thing. So, Summer my love, maybe you could figure out how to serve and then you can have the baby?"

The women all groaned. Another contraction rocked Summer. Damon, still holding her hand, didn't feel himself blown any which way. But Joey fell flat on his ass.

"Daddy, that didn't hurt as much," Summer said.

As Elena was fussing over their boy, Damon felt a light bulb click on. "Joey, come here. Grab her other hand. Caroline will step back. And—Elena, you really didn't feel that?"

Elena frowned, looking utterly confused. But so adorable in those scrubs.

As soon as Joey took Caroline's place and grabbed his sister's hand, Summer stopped crying. "How did you do that?" she asked, looking at her brother.

He shook his head, clearly confused.

"You made it stop hurting," she said. "Daddy did that a little. But you—"

Damon glanced at Joey. He could see the wheels spinning in his son's head. "Elena?" Damon asked. "Has she been in pain even when she's not having contractions?"

Elena nodded.

"And that's not normal?"

Elena shook her head.

"And you really didn't feel like the wind was knocking you down when she did have a contraction?" Damon asked. "I mean if I can, you should—"

But Joey shook his head, hard. "Dad. You have the Cure actively inside you. Mom just has traces of it. Look, Aunt Bonnie, this is a magic problem."

Bonnie bit her lip. "We know."

But Joey was grinning. "It's about balance. That's got to be it. Uncle Stefan, and Enzo, that's what they were talking about. And the Cure—Summer has to have some of that in her too, because of Mom and Dad. And now she's part of this generation of witches, and it's all about the balance. But that's why she's having so much more trouble than any of the other girls, with Cure, it's just an awful lot of magic. So we just need to provide a balance. I'm here, and now you're not in pain, Summer? Right?"

Summer nodded.

"So I'll even you out. If it's the magic that's out of balance, we'll fix that. And Dad, maybe you can help. If Aunt Bonnie stands beside you, holds your other hand? The energy will flow from me to Summer to you, to Bonnie, and back to me? You're doing some of this, Dad, who knows how or why, but Aunt Bonnie can help focus it. Because you're an idiot and you don't know how to transfer energy."

Before they could discuss it any further, or Damon could be offended at being called an idiot, Summer began screaming bloody murder. Bonnie ran to grab Damon's hand. He felt a strange push-pull of energy. Flowing through him. Out, and back, out and back. It was like, well he wasn't sure what it was like, but it was definitely like something.

Summer stopped screaming.

The contraction passed. He had so much to say, but he didn't have the energy to say it. They were all quiet, as if nobody had the energy to say anything. A few minutes later, another contraction came. Then another. Soon, so soon, they were speeding up until they were less than a minute apart. Damon's head was spinning. Each time the energy whooshed through him, it was harder for him to stay standing.

Crouching down, Elena announced that she could see the head. Damon could tell she was near tears. Elena was never teary inside a doctor's office or hospital room. She was always all business, even when one of their children was sick. But this was different.

As three more contractions rocked through Joey, Summer, Damon and Bonnie, Damon began to feel light-headed. He felt like he might pass out at any moment—this energy transfer was more intense than anything he'd ever felt. It was more intense than draining someone's blood, or being drained. His nose started bleeding, but he pushed through. The world was getting spotty when she began to push, but he stayed in his place, holding onto his baby's hand. He was her father and he wasn't going to fail her.

As she screamed a primal scream, the baby emerged into the world. Damon fell to his knees. Panting.

Bonnie crouched in front of him, cupping his chin in her hands, examining him, murmuring about the toll magic took. Telling him to not stand up too quickly. Her nose was also bleeding, but not as much as his. He tried to stand up, but he couldn't. Bonnie put a hand on his shoulder, telling him to stay put. Damon began to catch his breath, was preparing to find a way to stand up, so he could find out what had happened, so he could find out if Summer was okay.

And then, the most beautiful sound.

A piercing wail.

Damon looked up when that beautiful baby's cry woke him up. The baby was pink and squiggly and loud. A healthy set of lungs on that child. Well, he would need it in the Gilbert-Salvatore house. He'd need to make himself heard, in the midst of all those aunts and uncles, all that ego.

Still on the floor, Damon grinned at Summer. She'd gotten some color back. She was grinning, wide, wide, wide, brushing back tears of joy and relief.

Elena was crying and laughing as she handed the child to their daughter, laying the little witch onto Summer's bare breast. Skin on skin. Damon felt like the baby could use a bath first, but Summer was laughing in delight and cradling her child, whispering love to her very own little boy. Joey helped Damon off the floor and kept his arm around his father's waist even after he tried to swat it away, even after Damon told his son that he was fine and didn't need looking after.

Sooner than seemed possible, Elena had the baby cleaned off and measured and swaddled in a blue blanket. "Damon, come here," she said, "Hold this perfect little boy."

It was hard to fall in love with a creature that had almost killed his daughter. But he held his arms out dutifully, and cradled the newborn with the expert skill of a father six times over. The child's weight sunk into him—this was a chubby baby, bigger than Summer had been, maybe bigger than Joey or even Lucia. A full head of dark hair. Blue eyes, but baby's eyes were always blue, somehow he was sure these eyes would turn green. He wondered if this child would look like the child he'd seen in his vision, when he got to be ten or so. Damon couldn't be angry at this baby any longer. No, if there was anybody he should be angry at, it was dead witches.

Damon felt a rush of something warm and real. This was a child of his line, his family. His baby's baby. Magic and light and forgiveness were washing into him, overtaking him. "Welcome to the world, little boy," he said. "I'm your Gramps."

His family, which surely included Bonnie and Caroline, broke out laughing, the whole room laughing in the most wonderfully free way. All week he'd been telling anybody who would listen that he'd just be Uncle Damon to this kid because anything else was just depressing. But now, none of that mattered. Even Damon Salvatore could get over his vanity for a baby this damned sweet.

Damon sat down on the edge of Summer's bed. He kissed her her sweaty hair, saying, "You're a mother now, sweets. And it's going to be epic."

She nodded.

"You want your little one back for a bit?" he asked.

Summer grinned. As she reached out, Damon carefully transferred his grandson to Summer's eager but unexperienced arms. No matter how much she'd helped with the twins, she seemed nervous to hold her own baby. Simultaneously terrified and thrilled. "Just watch his head, there you go," Damon whispered. "There you go. You look great with him."

Summer was crying, inexplicably. "Really, Dad? You're not just saying that?"

"Really," he said.

Elena nodded, coming to stand beside Damon. "You look perfect, love. Welcome to the club." Damon wrapped an arm around his wife, who leaned into him, saying, "Damon, did you ever imagine that anything this amazing could happen?"

He leaned down to kiss Elena gently, chastely on the lips. Joey groaned, muttering something about getting a room, but Damon said, "No, Grandma, no I did not. Or do you want to be Granny? Or Nana? Or what was the other one you thought of?" She was laughing so hard he thought she might fall over. After a beat he added, "Oh, by the way. Elena! Stefan says hi."


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N_

_So this is mostly fluff. Slice of life into the Gilbert Salvatore household after the baby has arrived. I have some plot development coming soon, but I thought you all might enjoy reading this since it's been a while since last I posted. And because I'm obscenely busy right now, so plotting out this story has had to take a backseat to several other life and writing obligations. But don't worry, I'll finish this story. I'm now thinking that it will be ten chapters total, give or take a couple chapters. _

_(If anyone remembers my early author's notes about how this was a very short sequel to "The New Normal," and would be two or three chapters at most, yeah, I remember too :) Joke's on me, because this is now novella length. I guess I wasn't ready to say goodbye to these characters. And it is seriously gratifying to see that people are reading. Thanks to everyone who's still around for the ride. And special thanks to everyone who's reviewed. Those reviews really do keep me writing. And I have tough skin, so I'm always open to constructive criticism, as long as it's actually constructive.)_

_If there's something you'd love to see explored before this story is finished-whether it's plot or character-let me know! Share any and all thoughts in a review, or feel free to message me. If there's a character you'd like to see again, or to see more of, let me know that too. I can't promise to work in people's ideas, but I'm open to possibility and interesting ideas._

_Thanks again for reading, and stay safe out in the real world!_

_Norah_

_###_

**August 2041**

Damon was rummaging through the diaper bag, which was an earth-shatteringly annoying shade of pink. With a flamingo print all over its eye-piercing fabric. Summer had clearly chosen it to embarrass her father, every Tuesday and Thursday morning. She was diabolical, that one. "Phoebe and Zoe, we're about to be late! So just stop dawdling and choose whatever damned clothes you're wearing to camp! Like camp even cares!" he shouted. "Hey, Summer, where's his stuffed monkey thing?"

"Dad!" his eldest daughter shrieked, running down the stairs with the baby clutched to her chest. A disapproving expression on her face that would put Elena to shame. "You could have woken Manny."

He rolled his eyes. Baby Manny was looking around the living room all bright-eyed and excited to be alive. The baby had clearly been awake for some time. "But I didn't," Damon snapped. He hooked the diaper bag onto the stroller, grabbed the baby, and strapped his little body in, with the effortless, practiced efficiency of a father of six.

"He needs a nap at ten and two," his daughter said.

"I know. I'm on it."

"And the bottle, if you tilt it at this angle, it's better—"

He grabbed his daughter by the shoulders. "Kiddo, we'll be fine. Not my first rodeo. So just chill on the neurosis, okay?" She'd been struggling ever since she went back to work, weirded out by being away from the kid so much. She'd been working for a couple months now, but the hours had been sporadic and few. As of the last two weeks, she was almost full-time at work. Summer was now relying on a combination of Damon and daycare to take care of her little boy thirty-five hours a week. She'd been this neurotic, condescending mess every day this week had been like this, and he was struggling to be nice. He understood, of course, he understood. But he'd also been woken up at three in the morning by the baby and he was sick to death of the lecturing, like he was some kind of idiot, or somebody who didn't know how to swaddle an infant in twelve seconds flat.

But still, he took a deep breath, reminding himself of the fact that a) Summer was the child who'd taught him how to love a child, and b) Damon still remembered the sheer terror of being thrust into the world of parenthood when you really, really, really weren't ready for.

"Sweets," he said now, kissing his daughter's forehead. "He'll be fine with me. I'm experienced. I'm a fun dad. I'm on my way to being a truly outstanding Gramps. And, you, my love, don't need to feel bad about going to work. You're a fantastic mother. And I know you're feeling guilty for working today. I've been there. I've done the drop-off, okay? I get it. Six times over. It always sucks in the beginning."

"I'm just thinking that maybe it's just not fair to him. And I could cut back. I could try—"

Damon lowered his voice, softened his manner even more. "Your mom never stayed home full time. I never did. Work's important. Work keeps you sane. That's not to say that some people don't thrive on being full-on, hardcore, stay-at-home moms. Or dads. And if you wanted to do that, I'd say go for it ... But sweets, I can tell how much you care about the design work stuff you're doing."

Summer leaned into him, wrapped her arms around him. She was shaking a little. He could tell she was crying, but he didn't comment on it. "Summer, you're a really good mom. Promise."

Gulping as she continued to cry into his shoulder, she murmured, "It's just. I didn't know how hard it would be to leave him every day."

"I know."

"You promise I'm a good mom?"

"Yup."

"Really? Like, objectively good? Not good because I'm your daughter and you're biased good?"

Damon pulled back, wiping her eyes with the back of his hands. "I promise. Objectively, you kick ass at this. Since you're my daughter, I'll add that you look beautiful this morning. Though I think the skirt is a little short."

She laughed and went over to the baby. Manny was looking all around, like the world was magic. Damon supposed it kind of was. Especially lately.

They still didn't have any information about how the weird-ass, recent brimming over magic might affect the world beyond the witch pregnancies, but the world was still clearly brimming with magic. Summer and Joey could feel it. If Damon paid attention, he could even sense something different. On the plus side, it seemed like the spike of witch babies born this year—the ones Damon and Joey thought were destined to be special servants of nature—was nearing its end. Certain witch elders were predicting that the last of these special babies might be born around the autumn equinox. About a month from now. But they still had no clue why all these babies were being born, or what was really going on with the excess magic brimming over into the world itself. Bonnie didn't think the magic was just going to dissipate. She was certain that something big was coming.

And just last week, little Manny had set his nursery's jungle-print curtains on fire. He'd woken up in a bad mood, crying up a storm, hungry. Typical baby stuff. Summer was taking forever to clean a bottle because she had it in her head that they had to be cleaned just so. Didn't matter that her mother was a freaking doctor and told her the bottles did not need to be cleaned in quite such a rigorous manner. Elena had been rocking Manny when all of a sudden, poof, the curtains lit up on fire. Which had woken up the entire Gilbert-Salvatore household and caused a ripple effect of worry in the magical community of Mystic Falls. Accidental or not, a three and a half month-old baby doing magic was not normal. Even Summer and Joey, or the Saltzman twins for that matter, hadn't exhibited magic that young.

Summer crouched down in front of her son, pulled on his toes, which made him giggle. "I love you, little man. Mama loves you. So, so so much. Okay?... You be good for Gramps, okay? Deal? Gramps may be kick-ass, but he is old."

Damon groaned. "Very funny, kiddo. Now Gramps and Manny, AND the freaking twins, are getting the hell out of here. IF THE TWINS WOULD JUST GET THEIR ASSES DOWN HERE SO WE CAN GET TO CAMP ON TIME!" he yelled up the stairs. "ZOE AND PHOEBE, I'M TALKING TO YOU!"

The twins came thundering down the stairs, backpacks slung on their shoulders, sour looks on both of their face. "Dad, just chill," Zoe said with a truly inexcusable level of sass and disrespect.

"Uh, no," Damon said, face becoming hard as he felt his blood pressure rise.

"Uh, chill," Phoebe said.

Damon cleared his throat and then lowered his voice to the dangerous pitch of his vampire voice. "You will not talk to me like that. You will, however, get outside on the count of twelve or there will be no ice cream for you, after camp. Furthermore, we are walking today because it's a beautiful day, and I feel like getting some semblance of exercise in, even if you brats don't. There will be not one word of complaint about walking, or again, _no ice cream_. For you at least. I reserve the right to eat ice cream in front of you, and lord it over you."

The girls looked appropriately intimidated as they ran down the last few stairs and bolted out the front door.

Summer laughed. "And, you've still got it, Dad. ... But, seriously, no scary vamp voice on the baby!"

He grinned and wrapped her in another, briefer hug. "Never on babies."

He was almost at the front door when Summer said, "Dad, there is something else."

"Summer! I've got two pacifiers with me. And his favorite book. And – "

"No, that's not it," she said in a rush. He turned back to her, and Summer looked shy all of a sudden. "Daddy, if there's witch business going on today or any day, you'll tell me, right? I really ought to be involved. I mean, I know you and Mom are trying to protect us kids. But I'm not a kid anymore. I haven't been for a long time. And Mom is tiptoeing around me, and it sucks." Damon opened his mouth to try to stop this rant, but she raised a hand and cut him off before he could say anything. "And Joey's pissed because he tried to talk to her last night and she brushed him off. Like this really flippant brush-off. But see, Joey and I know we're involved in all the magic stuff going on right now. We know Manny's involved. I get if you're keeping Gil and Lucia in the dark. They're not part of it, as far as I can tell at least. And they are basically kids. But Joey and me, we're out of school. If it wasn't for all this craziness, I wouldn't be at home, he wouldn't be at home. We'd be out living grownup lives, or grownup adjacent least. AND we're part of this whole weird magic exploding into the earth thing. So we were thinking that maybe, you, Daddy, could just level with us. You understand that we're adults and maybe you could treat us like—"

Damon sighed. He'd already heard this entire argument from Joey, ad nauseum. "Kiddo, I promise you that I know you're an adult." When she opened her mouth, no doubt to mouth off at him, and probably point out the hypocrisy of calling her "kiddo" in that particular sentence, Damon raised a hand to silence her. "Summer, I know you're a goddamn adult. You may be the most adult twenty-three year-old I've ever met since Caroline Forbes was twenty-three. Okay?"

She laughed a small laugh, but did not let go of her intense expression.

"Look, sweetie," Damon went on. "If I get wind of witch business you're my first call. Seriously. But like we've told you and your truly obnoxious brother, repeatedly, _nobody knows anything right now_."

"Really? You're not just saying that?"

Damon glared at his oldest spawn. "For fuck's sake, Summer! It's the truth. Maybe your mom wants to protect you, but she's not lying to either of you. Aunt Bonnie asked us to sit tight and wait for news. So we're sitting tight and waiting for news. I know it's terrifying for your neurotic brain to do nothing. But that's just what you're going to have to do. Oh, and get to work and design graphic design things. And let me get out the door with your child, so I can take your sisters to camp and then Manny and I can go have our day."

Summer laughed a real laugh and nodded, grudgingly it seemed. But she let him out the door.

###

That afternoon, while the twins were still blissfully in camp, he took Manny to the town square, spread out a blanket, lay the baby down next to him, and pulled out his battered, ancient copy of _The House of Seven Gables_. He'd tried and failed to get Lucia to choose this book, or any of his favorite classics, to do her big English term paper on last spring. Instead she'd chosen a book written in 1996, which her teacher assured Damon was now, officially, classic literature. He'd pretended to throw up in the teacher's face.

His grandbaby was too young to crawl or even move off the blanket, meaning that Damon could read without worry and enjoy this perfect summer day—it was probably one of the last perfectly hot days this August, so he figured he'd make the best of it.

A hysterical giggle jolted him out of his reading trance.

He didn't sit up, just stared into the overly made-up face of one Ms. Lindsay Fell. Possibly his least favorite of the modern Fells. She was dressed, for reasons passing understanding, in a white suit that had to be incredibly hot on this summer day. In muggy southern Virginia. He tried to prepare himself for the inevitable annoyance he would encounter when talking to Lindsay Fell. "Damon Salvatore," she said brightly. "As I live and breathe!"

He smiled his best fake smile. "My favorite Fell. Didn't you move away?"

She nodded, and then sat down next to him, uninvited and, apparently, not caring whether he wanted her on his picnic blanket or not. "We've been living in D.C. for a few years," she told him still so damned brightly. "Just back for a couple weeks, to see the fam. My husband has gotten quite active in the Republican party. So we find it best to be in the Nation's Capital." She said the last two words in a particularly pleased-with-herself tone.

"Charming."

"I think so."

When Damon failed to say anything more, and then picked up his book again, she didn't take the hint, but instead blabbered on. "So Damon," Lindsay said, gesturing to the baby, "you and Elena just keep popping out children! What is this one, number ten?" Her words were accompanied by an extraordinarily fake laugh.

Damon finally sat up, plopped Manny on his lap and rolled his eyes at the Fell. "We stopped at six. Our youngest are the twins, almost nine now, if you can believe it."

Lindsay raised an elegantly plucked eyebrow. "So you're just babysitting?"

He shrugged before smiling a real smile. He couldn't help smiling when he talked about his grandson. "Yes and no. Lindsay Fell, meet my grandson."

In the past couple months, he'd stopped shying away from words like "grandson" and "grandfather." Damon had gotten old, not only chronologically but now biologically. And somehow, he just couldn't be bothered to care anymore. Screw it. Seeing Stefan, it was this stark reminder that his brother was dead. Even if the afterlife his brother was stuck in seemed downright pleasant, Stefan was super dead. And Damon was alive. Really alive. He'd gotten a second chance to be a human. Stefan had thrown himself into literal hellfire to give Damon this chance, wife, kids, now another generation creeping in. This chance to lead the kind of life Stefan had always wanted for himself. Maybe Damon owed it to his brother to stop bitching and moaning, to stop worrying about labels like "middle-aged" or "grandpa" or "old." And definitely to stop worrying what people like the Fells thought of him.

"Grandson!" she said, sounding shocked. "Now, Damon, you are not old enough to have grandchildren. Surely not?"

"You flatter me, Lindsay," he said. "But seriously, you remember my eldest? Summer? This is her little boy."

"Your daughter can't be more than—"

He glared at her. If he had to give another lecture to the few people in Mystic Falls who seemed to be living in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries, and who enjoyed playing morality police regarding his daughter's pregnancy—his head might just explode.

Damon wished he could really shock them by revealing that he also had a great-great-whatever grandson, Nate Salvatore, the kid (who wasn't a kid anymore), who'd tracked down Damon, soon after Damon had taken the Cure, as part of a misguided genealogy search. Unbeknownst to Damon, back in his human 1.0 days, he'd actually fathered a kid. During the Civil War, out of wedlock. Nate was his distant descendent. He wished he could shove Lindsay's implications, her insinuations that either he or Summer had been too young to have a kid, by shocking her with his real birthdate. Sure I'm old enough to be a grandfather, he'd tell her. Hell, I was old enough in 1890 too. But he settled for hissing, "Summer's twenty-three. And it's 2041, not 1841. It's not scandalous in the least, her being a mom."

"Well, you and Elena, you did start young."

Damon laughed. In a way, she had a fair point. He'd been young biologically when he died, and brand-new to being human again, when Elena had gotten pregnant the first time. He hadn't felt old enough to be a dad, and Summer had been extremely, extremely unplanned. Her arrival had thrust him into an accelerated adulthood, just as it would have done to a regular twenty-six year-old. And when they met "parent friends," outside of Caroline and Ric, all those parents were in their thirties, living in houses not grad student housing, talking about 401k's, much more settled down and grown-up seeming than Damon and Elena felt.

But instead of saying any of that crap out loud, he stuck his tongue out at Lindsay and snapped, "It's not like I knocked her up when she was still in high school. I mean, give me some credit. She was in med school. We were married."

Lindsay looked suitably sorry for her rudeness. She cleared her throat, not responding, but not refuting his words. After another silence that he deliberately made uncomfortable by not saying anything and instead pretend-fussing over the baby, Lindsay stood up, brushing off her white suit unnecessarily, as if they'd been sitting on the ground instead of a blanket.

"It was lovely to see you, Damon," she said. "As always."

He grinned his best fake grin, the pretend-we're-friends grin. "You too, Linds."

She smiled at him indulgently. "I like the grey at the temples, by the way, very distinguished." When Damon groaned, running a hand through his once completely ink-black hair, she held up a hand. "Vanity doesn't become you, Mr. Salvatore. I love the whole grownup look. Dare I say that being a grandfather becomes you?" Lindsay said with a surprisingly sweet, if slightly flirtatious smile.

He couldn't help laughing.

"Sometime I miss this town," she said, her voice a little wistful now. "I miss seeing ... people I used to know. I think about you sometimes, Damon. It's, oh you know, sometimes you have this idea in your youth about a person you might ... But that's all silly girl stuff. Forget I even said it." She bit her lip and looked at him like a schoolgirl with a crush.

He laughed. "Ah, Linds, you held a torch for me all this time?"

Lindsay Fell shook her head, in a firm denial of his mocking words, before snapping, "Of course not, you stupid ass!"

He stood up, gave her a brief hug, while still cradling his grandson close to him. Lindsay might be an elitist snob, and not attractive in the least, and presumptuous as hell, but she wasn't a bad person. Not really. He'd met enough truly bad people to know that a socialite like Lindsay Fell was far more silly than sinister.

And in this moment, he felt sorry for the snob. She looked ... lost somehow. Like maybe in middle age she'd discovered that her life was not everything she'd thought it was. That she hadn't gotten everything she'd dreamed about when she was young. He'd met her husband after all. Such a tool. He'd met her two seemingly perfect kids. Annoying, dull brats. Who could blame her for nursing a little crush on Damon Salvatore all these years? He'd been told he was epic, after all, even just to cross paths with.

"If you're looking for a fling, I can't help you out, Ms. Fell. But there's a few regulars at the bar I could introduce you to—"

"Damon, do not be scandalous! It is extremely inappropriate in a councilman such as yourself, not to mention a father, and even more so a grandfather—to say such things to a married woman!"

And there it was. The bitch resurfaced, pushing aside that brief glimpse of he'd had into her humanity. Oh well. He'd tried.

Then she laughed and pointed at his front. "Oh dear, the baby just spit up on you."

Damon groaned again and crouched down to fish a cloth out of the diaper bag.

"I forgot to ask. What's the little one's name?"

"Manny. But, uh," he said as he began mopping up spit-up, and checking to see if any had gotten in his hair, or the baby's hair. "Short for Damon, actually. Summer's a daddy's girl."

She spent another minute or so cooing over the baby and how adorable it was that Damon had a namesake, until she finally decided that she "really must run" in order to not be late for the Daughters of the American Revolution meeting. She gave him one last wistful smile before she trotted off in her unnecessary-for-the-occasion, uncomfortable-looking heels.

He was about to go back to reading when he checked his watch and cursed under his breath. Camp had ended ten minutes ago. "All right, Damon Salvatore the Second, let's haul ass so we can get your aunts before those pissant camp counselors decide to charge me extra for being late."

The baby smiled at him and then spit up some more. Damon swore Manny knew exactly what he was doing and was spitting up to mess with Gramps. He was the spawn of Damon's spawn after all. Not only bound to be smart, Damon the Second could set curtains on fire for shits and giggles.


End file.
